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HOW TO SELL 
PRINTING 


BY 

Harry M^HB 


ASFORD 



New York 

Oswald Publishing Company 
1916 









Copyright 1916 by the 
Oswald Publishing Company 


*) 



OSWALD PRESS • NEW TOIF 


© Cl. A 4 4 5 2 5 2 

1*0 / . 

A ' 


Contents 


I Selling Printing at a Profit. 

Two extremes of printing salesmanship—Practices 
that are detrimental—Low prices quoted through 
fear—Selling of printing different—Business and 
trade customs—Standardizing trade customs—Con¬ 
densing the code. 

II Building a Printing Business. 

Printers should select their customers—There 
should be special arguments—Literature consist¬ 
ing of arguments—Following up mail advertising 
—Handling business by mail—As to delivery and 
prices—Laying out a sales plan—Holding the cus¬ 
tomer. 

III Laying Out a Selling Campaign. 

Possibilities of direct advertising—Work of the 
selling department—Systematic cooperative ad¬ 
vertising—Personality of the salesmen—Should 
make calls regularly—Broken promises unpardon¬ 
able—A London printer’s folder—Advocating the 
use of color. 

IV How to Secure Printing Orders. 

Bringing in the orders—Obliging the customer— 
Courtesy, promptness, accuracy — The human 
element in a sale—Definitions of a salesman— 
Salesmen should be supported—A satisfactory re¬ 
muneration plan. 

V Improvement of the Trade. 

A standard of prices needed—The board-of-trade 
plan—How the plan works—Drawbacks of the 
plan—Laws should not be violated—In union there 
is strength—Success of printers’ organizations— 
Publicity necessary and helpful. 


PAGE 

1 


9 


18 


27 


35 








44 


VI The Folly of Price Cutting. 

Keeping the plant busy—Fluctuations in busi¬ 
ness—Fillers tend to lower prices—Every job 
should make a profit—Cheap work and better or¬ 
ders—A practice that is ruinous—The reforms of 
the craft—Respect of the customer. 

VII The Psychology of Selling Printing. 53 

Selling printing successfully — Conversational 
methods important—Reading the human mind— 
Salesmen should be good listeners—Orders lost 
through talking—Holding off the decision—Refer¬ 
ence to competing houses—Psychological methods 
in selling. 

VIII The Advertising-Service Department.... 62 

Salesmen who can talk intelligently—The practi¬ 
cability of service—Advertising the department— 

The kinds of service—Relieving the customer of 
work—A letter to business men—Asking an in¬ 
vestigation. 

IX Is a House-Organ Good Advertising?. ... 70 

The value of a house-organ—Must be fresh and 
attractive—Will not run itself—What is a house- 
organ—A house-organ that failed—A sample of 
the printer’s work—The mailing list—The copy 
that goes in. 

X Selling Printing by Mail. 79 

Quoting the price—A spirit of confidence—Pre¬ 
paring a dummy—Acknowledging the order— 
Sending the invoice—Obtaining new customers— 

Direct advertising suggested—Paying the freight 

—Increasing purchases. 

XI Difficulties That Bother the Estimator. . 89 

Some knotty problems—Color work—The matter 

of overtime—Consulting with shop employees— 

Using a cost book—Consult production records— 

The kind of job—Hard-to-please customers—In 
the plant. 






XII Credits, Allowances, Adjusting Claims. . 99 

Cash or charge—Asking a deposit—Bills carefully 
itemized — Don’t combat customers — Adjusting 
complaints — Delayed deliveries — Customers are 
assets—Overlook petty annoyances—Verification 
by letter. 

XIII Selling Problems of the Smaller Shop. . . . 109 

Fluctuation of orders—Studying costs—Paying 
the proprietor—Small and large shops—Need not 
cut prices—Sound credit—Unduly ambitious—The 
small shop. 

XIV Why Printers Fail in Business. 118 

Successful printing concerns—Causes of failure— 

The expense of selling—Assistance of supply 
houses—Poor bookkeeping responsible—Buying a 
plant—Better managers needed. 






i 






































Chapter One 


Selling Printing at a Profit 

S ELLING printing at a profit is presumably the 
object of those who engage in the printing busi¬ 
ness, but an investigation of the conditions under 
which printing is sold in almost every city and state in 
the country would lead the observer to believe that the 
profit is of small consideration with many printers, 
who ply their vocation from year to year with net re¬ 
sults of a bare living in many cases and of bankruptcy 
and impaired credit in others. 

Advertising and selling are very nearly synonymous 
in marketing the product of the printing press, but as 
my book on “How to Advertise Printing” deals more 
particularly with printed publicity and other strictly 
advertising methods for inducing sales, this volume on 
“How to Sell Printing” will deal more particularly 
with office methods and selling by means of salesmen, 
correspondence, cooperative organizations, etc., which, 
while they may be termed advertising in a sense, are of 
a more personal nature and are intended to be sugges¬ 
tive and helpful to every master printer, manager, 
proprietor, or representative of a printing house, who 
deals either personally or through the mail with the 
buying public, in making sales of printing. 

It is generally conceded in the trade that a good 


2 Two Extremes of Printing Salesmanship 

printing salesman is a most valuable man. Indeed, the 
really competent salesman who can continue to sell 
printing day after day on a profitable basis is about as 
scarce as the paper salesman, and it is a well-known 
fact that good paper salesmen are extremely hard to 
find. 

The two extremes of printing salesmanship are per¬ 
haps represented, at the top, by the active manager or 
principal salesman of the large printing house who 
handles big orders for the railroads, corporations, 
etc., and the printing broker who is coming to take an 
important place in the commercial life of every large 
city; at the bottom stands, or perhaps drags his way 
along, the man who devotes a part or all of his time to 
soliciting printing on a basis of ten per cent of the 
amount of the orders he secures. Based on the results 
and the net value of their services, the man who has 
reached the higher altitudes of his profession is the 
poorer paid of the two. I know a number of salesmen in 
this class who would have become independent within a 
few years if they had received ten per cent of the total 
sales of printing which they had brought to the houses 
they represented. The inefficient and incompetent rep¬ 
resentative who is paid ten per cent commission on the 
orders he secures is usually overpaid, because much of 
the business he secures is often undesirable rather than 
profitable. He deals with small business houses who buy 
infrequently and in small quantities, and this kind of 


Practices That Are Detrimental 3 

salesman is always trying to secure a lower price for 
his customers than that quoted by the concern which 
he is supposed to represent. I have seen these commis¬ 
sion men come into the office of a plant and talk for a 
reduction in price as though they were the customers, 
and their stock excuse for not getting business always 
is that the prices of the establishment which they rep¬ 
resent are too high to meet competition. 

The correct basis of compensation for a printing 
salesman would seem to be the profits on the work he 
secures, rather than the amount of the orders. The 
salesman might not fare so well under such an arrange¬ 
ment ; he probably would not; but the employer would 
be the gainer. 

It will be my object to suggest various ways of deal¬ 
ing with the public to secure their printing orders, and 
to outline some methods which have proved successful 
in carrying out the various branches of office work 
connected with the selling of printing through solicita¬ 
tion of salesmen or through the mails. 

My experience, covering almost every phase of deal¬ 
ing with the public in large shops and small, in large 
cities and small towns, and my observation of the meth¬ 
ods in use in many plants, lead me to believe that there 
are many practices and customs in the printing trade 
which are actually detrimental to making sales. Cus¬ 
tomers are frequently handled in a manner which does 
not result in orders, and some of the really successful 


4 Low Prices Quoted Through Fear 

methods of handling prospects and buyers are little 
known and not generally used by representatives of the 
printing trade. 

In what other line of trade is the seller diffident 
about asking a price for his goods that will pay him a 
substantial profit? Yet this is exactly the condition 
that exists in the printing trade in almost every city 
and town throughout the country. The printers quote 
low prices because they are afraid that customers will 
take their orders elsewhere. Having been a buyer as 
well as a seller of printing, I have at times been inter¬ 
ested in getting customers’ ideas of the business ability 
of the printers whom they patronize. I recently was 
talking with the buyer for an automobile supply house 
who purchases large quantities of printing every 
month. We met in a printing office and I remarked, 
“This firm ought to be making money, as they seem 
very busy lately.” “They ought to be, but they are 
not,” replied my friend, “because they do work too 
cheap. They are afraid the other fellow will get the 
job, so they cut the price, selling linotype composition 
for $1.25 per hour, and don’t know what work costs 
them because they do not keep their cost records ac¬ 
curately enough.” 

This seems to me a queer arraignment of a printing 
house by one of its principal customers. There must 
be something wrong with the selling methods of the 
printing business when such assertions can be truly 


Selling of Printing Different 5 

made about a printing concern that employs a number 
of people and that presents every aspect of a busy, 
prosperous plant. 

I have often contended that the selling of printing 
was something vastly different from the sale of sugar 
or other staple commodities which are kept in a barrel 
or on the shelf, to be reached for and measured out at 
a fixed price when asked for. To sell printing profit¬ 
ably and well calls for the highest type of salesman¬ 
ship, and the person who can do this should be looked 
up to as an example of supremacy in that branch of 
printing upon which all the other departments depend. 
The salesman should never lose sight of the elusive 
profit, however, in his ambition to secure an order; for 
the unprofitable order is a drawback and detriment to 
a plant in many ways, aside from the missing profit. It 
takes up the time of men who might otherwise be em¬ 
ployed on profitable work; it helps to acquire an un¬ 
desirable reputation for too low prices by leading the 
buyer to expect a low price the next time he orders; 
and it establishes a precedent on the particular job, 
for which it will be very hard to secure a higher price 
should the customer desire to reorder. 

If the printing business is to be conducted along true, 
businesslike lines, correct business principles must be 
established and followed. The 1915 convention of the 
Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, which met 
at Toronto, Canada, recognized the need for this, and 


6 


Business and Trade Customs 


ten “Standards of Practice” were adopted by the 
printing division, or “Department of Graphic Arts.” 
These standards were so well considered, and indicate 
such an accurate knowledge of existing conditions on 
the part of the advertising men who were responsible 
for them, that they have since been indorsed and highly 
approved by the largest organization of employing 
printers, the United Typothetse and Franklin Clubs of 
America, and by leading printers and manufacturers 
of printers’ supplies. Following is the text of these 
standards, which might well be called the business code 
of every master printer in America: 

1. To give full value for every dollar received. 

2. To charge fair prices, viz., known cost plus a reasonable 
profit. 

3. To subscribe to and work for truth and honesty in business; 
to avoid substitution, broken promises, unbusinesslike methods. 

4. To cooperate in establishing and maintaining approved busi¬ 
ness ethics. 

5. To be original producers and creators, not copyists. 

6. To be promotive, looking to the needs of the customer, an¬ 
alyzing his requirements and devising new and effective means 
for 'promoting and extending his business. 

7. To place emphasis upon quality rather than price, service to 
the customer being the first consideration. 

8. To merit the support of buyers of their product by living up 
to the spirit as well as the letter of these standards. 

9. To develop, by cooperation with other departments of the 
Associated Advertising Clubs, an ever-strengthening bond of 
union to the end that the service rendered to advertising by the 
graphic arts may achieve its highest efficiency. 


Standardizing Trade Customs 7 

10. To aid in securing just and harmonious relations between 
employer and employed by establishing honorable conditions of 
employment. 

Trade customs are the rules which are supposed to 
prevail in the printing trade, but are quite as fre¬ 
quently conspicuous by their absence. 

Printing organizations in a number of cities are 
making an effort to standardize the customs of the 
trade and to promote their observance by making the 
public more familiar with them. To this end, these 
trade rules are being printed on cards, to be hung 
prominently in the business office, and the effect must 
be beneficial. 

The trouble with many of these lists of customs is 
that they are too long and there are too many of them. 
The customer, who is expected to note the rules of the 
office by seeing them displayed on a wall card, must 
read and study about a column of matter to learn what 
he is expected to do. 

The Ben Franklin Club of Louisville, Ky., improved 
upon this condition by condensing the customs and 
eliminating some of them. The result is nine short par¬ 
agraphs—short enough to be printed on a letterhead 
or an estimate blank, and either one of these forms con¬ 
stitutes a suitable medium for conveying a knowledge 
of printing-trade customs to the public. 

Following are these customs as published in Louis¬ 
ville : 


8 Condensing the Code 

All shipments of printed matter shall be at purchaser’s risk of 
delay. 

All orders accepted are subject to delays by fire, accident, 
strikes or other causes beyond our control. 

It being impossible to print the exact quantity ordered, it is 
agreed that a shortage or excess in count, varying not more than 
five per cent of the quantity ordered, at a pro-rata price, will be 
accepted as filling the order. 

Postals and stamped envelopes require an immediate outlay of 
cash, and check for same should accompany order. 

All quotations are made subject to acceptance within ten days. 
Alterations from original copy or proofs will be charged for on 
a time basis. 

All copy shall be legible and properly prepared. 

All cuts and plates furnished shall be type-high and in good 
condition. 

Terms: Net cash; no discount. 


Chapter Two 


Building a Printing Business 

I N building a printing business, it is quite as neces¬ 
sary to have a plan of the business structure as it 
is to have a plan for building a house. Many a 
printer has failed for lack of a definite plan of action. 
He may labor day and night and be noted in his town 
for his industry, but if his work is misdirected energy 
there is little prospect of his succeeding. 

It is apparent that a small printing plant cannot 
handle all kinds of printing orders to advantage, and 
it should be equally evident that the manager of such 
a shop should therefore select the kind of work that he 
can do advantageously, soliciting orders for such work 
and letting other and perhaps larger business go be¬ 
cause it is beyond his capacity. 

There are as many kinds of printing as there are of 
ground cereals, for example; yet we see mills that 
grind only certain grains, few if any attempting to 
mill all the various food products that are manufac¬ 
tured from cereals. There are some classes of work, 
such as large posters, that are absolutely impossible 
for the small printshop to produce; and there are 
other lines which could, perhaps, be produced but 
which would be undesirable and unprofitable because 
out of the ordinary line of orders. There is economy in 


10 Printers Should Select Their Customers 

handling a single line or a few kinds of work because 
every one connected with the plant becomes familiar 
with work that is similar to previous orders and un¬ 
consciously makes better time on it. The shop that 
makes a specialty of letterheads and other small com¬ 
mercial forms will show lower cost records than the 
large plant doing but little of this small work. And 
the same principle holds true all through the great 
variety of printing grist that comes to the printing 
mill. The printer should “stick to his last” as far as 
circumstances will permit, and at the end of a business 
year will make a better showing than if his ambition or 
enterprise leads him frequently to get out of his beaten 
track in handling unfamiliar or unusual work. 

Next in importance to selecting the kind of work 
that he can handle to advantage, is the choice of the 
customers that a printer wishes to serve. And if the 
matter be handled systematically, patrons of a certain 
kind can be drawn to a particular shop and can be held 
as customers, even in the face of strong competition. 
In selecting customers in advance of their becoming 
actual patrons, the first consideration is their credit, 
and usually this credit should be near to the top of the 
rating list. Few printers can afford to take chances on 
the payment of bills, and it is one of the evils of the 
trade that persons who could not buy a dollar’s worth 
of groceries on credit find it not hard to secure credit 
for printing amounting to many times as much. Print- 


There Should Be Special Arguments 11 

ing is not usually a cash business, and for this reason, 
if no other, great care should be used in securing a 
deposit or good evidence of credit responsibility before 
doing work for a new or unknown firm. 

In selecting customers-to-be, another consideration 
is to follow certain trades which will likely be produc¬ 
tive of similar work. If a printer decides that he can 
handle the office supplies of manufacturers and whole¬ 
sale houses, for example, a list of these houses in his 
territory should be prepared. This should be done by 
securing the correct names and addresses of the houses 
and, when possible, the names of the managers or buy¬ 
ers. It will also be convenient to have some information 
regarding the nature of the businesses conducted. 

With a good list of this kind, which need not neces¬ 
sarily be large at first, the next step is to solicit the 
business of these firms systematically, regularly and 
frequently. If they are located in the same city as the 
printer, a good solicitor should put them on his calling 
list and make regular visits with a persistence that, 
after several months, will result either in orders or in 
some definite reason why they cannot be secured. In 
breaking into new territory, the salesman should try 
to have something new to show and fresh arguments 
each time he calls. The custom of limiting a call to a 
single question, “Anything for me today?” will never 
succeed in securing business from firms that are not 
already patrons. The salesman must appear each time 


12 Literature Consisting of Arguments 

in a new garb, as it were, offering suggestions that are 
likely to be helpful to the firm he is soliciting. 

The same principle applies in soliciting business by 
mail. Each letter, folder or circular that goes out 
should contain some specific argument for business. 
Reasons, and good ones, must be presented to get a 
first order, or even an inquiry, by mail. And the first 
literature sent out should be directed particularly to 
getting an opportunity to quote prices or submit sam¬ 
ples of work. Inquiries of this kind are very valuable to 
a salesman. They “break the ice” and avoid the “cold 
canvas” so obnoxious to the salesman. The advertis¬ 
ing matter should go direct to the point and should 
be as nearly perfect as possible, from a typographical 
standpoint. The order in which the points are pre¬ 
sented and the harmonious appearance of the work are 
always important. 

A successful mail-order advertiser told me recently 
that he had learned by expensive experience that his 
literature must consist almost entirely of arguments, 
leading up to the point where the order blank could be 
introduced and the reader asked to sign it at the psy¬ 
chological moment. “If we let the reader’s mind get 
away from the direct line leading up to the order, we 
don’t get the business,” he said. And this is the point 
I wish to emphasize—that soliciting printing orders 
by mail is a cold-blooded proposition, and, to be suc¬ 
cessful, must consist largely of strong arguments show- 


Following Up Mail Advertising 13 

ing why the house sending out the advertising is the 
best printing house to do the work. General statements 
should be avoided and the prospect continually urged 
to take a single definite step—to place one order or to 
ask for quotations on a single job. 

It takes patience to realize on mail advertising sent 
direct to the prospect, and it may take weeks or months 
of follow-up work before winning a first order from a 
big firm whose business is desirable. This sort of adver¬ 
tising must therefore be carefully planned for some 
time in advance. Each mailing should have some con¬ 
nection with the literature that precedes and follows 
it, and a record of every piece of advertising sent out 
should be kept on filing cards. First orders can also be 
entered on these same cards if it is not practical to 
enter all orders in this way. 

There is no exact standard to follow in designing 
and writing the advertising for a mail-order campaign. 
The copy should be of real interest to the reader, the 
paper stock and printing should be harmonious, and 
the literature should be inclosed in envelopes that will 
insure its reaching its destination in good order. One- 
cent postage is successful on some literature, and other 
forms get better results when sealed, requiring two 
cents or more postage. Form letters are good, if not 
too long, and particularly when accompanied by other 
printing. For instance, if a printer produces a credit¬ 
able piece of printing for some customer, he might re- 


14 


Handling Business by Mail 

print the job for use in his advertising and send it out 
as a sample, accompanied by a letter to drive home the 
point that a similar job, or one just as good, would be 
good advertising for the prospect. 

In writing form letters, there is one thing to be 
avoided in starting a letter, and that is any reference 
to failure to receive replies to letters previously sent. 
Nothing is gained by such reference. It has been too 
common in mail-order advertising. 

In handling business by mail, resulting from direct 
advertising, personal letters should be used exclusively 
after the first inquiry from the prospect. Handle such 
inquiries just as a letter from a regular customer 
would be handled, except that a little more care is 
needed to make the correspondent familiar with the 
ways of the printing house. Samples and dummies are 
essential in handling printing orders by mail; and quo¬ 
tations should be exact, specifying paper and sending 
a sample of the exact weight and size with the quota¬ 
tion. In sending samples of paper it is always best to 
send a sample of liberal size, or, if it is to be used on a 
booklet or folder, make up an accurate dummy to show 
how it will look on the job. Samples of type should also 
be submitted, not in the form of a specimen book of all 
the type in the plant, but by setting a few lines or a 
page of the job under consideration, or by submitting 
a sample of another job, showing the type suggested, 
in actual use. 


15 


As to Delivery and Prices 

It is important in handling orders by mail to state 
definitely by what date delivery can be made. It is not 
necessary to say that the job will be shipped on a cer¬ 
tain date, but on or before a stated time; and such 
promises should be adhered to even more closely than 
promises for delivery on local orders, because delays 
in delivery are frequent. Prices should always be 
quoted in such a way that the buyer will understand 
whether he or the printer is to pay delivery charges. 
Quotations f. o. b. the city in which the printer is lo¬ 
cated are most satisfactory, and at the same time it 
should be plainly stated in some way on the quotation 
that the responsibility of the printer ceases upon de¬ 
livery of the goods in good order to the express com¬ 
pany or railroad. 

Systematized soliciting is the only kind that is really 
profitable. The printer should study his field and the 
prospective customers that he wants to make his own, 
and continually try to find new ways in which his plant 
can handle the work of these future patrons as well or 
better than it is now being handled. 

One good solicitor, well directed, will bring more 
profitable business to a printing plant than a half- 
dozen men following the “hit-or-miss” system of call¬ 
ing on anybody who is easy to reach. Some of the best 
business is the hardest to get, and the salesman who 
does not follow a definite plan of persistent and intelli¬ 
gent solicitation will never get the most desirable 
orders. 


16 


Laying Out a Sales Plan 

It is possible for even a small plant to make rapid 
progress in increasing the sales by laying out a plan 
for the advertising and for the salesmen covering a 
period of several months, or a year, and adhering 
closely to this plan. It must certainly be based upon 
right principles and be backed up by the kind of serv¬ 
ice that is promised. The equipment must be adequate 
to the kind of orders handled, and promises must be 
lived up to. 

A new customer is valuable not alone for the profit 
on his first order but for his future business. Business 
houses which get satisfactory service at prices that do 
not seem to them too high will continue to purchase 
from the same house until some definite thing draws or 
drives them to another printer. The frequent reference 
to “our printers” or “my printer” shows that the gen¬ 
eral trend of business is to continue to buy printing 
from the same concern until a rival induces a change 
by quoting lower prices or giving better service. 

Customers, once secured, should be held, therefore, 
even at high cost. They are doubtless the most valuable 
asset of any business. A printing plant that has closed 
down is sold as junk, and the used machinery, types, 
etc., will not bring more than a third or a half as much 
as the plant would sell for if it were running, even 
though it might be operating at a loss. 

A printer can well afford to take a lot of injury to 
his pride, can let the customer demand unreasonable 


Holding the Customer 17 

things in the way of delivery, and can submit to many 
unpleasant and unjust conditions, if he knows that he 
is making a good profit from the work of the offending 
customer. 


Chapter Three 


Laying Out a Selling Campaign 

AS the selling of the product is without doubt one of 
/\ the most important departments of the printing 
-L jL business, it is equally plain that a selling plan 
or campaign is essential to even a moderate degree of 
success. The day of the hit-or-miss method of soliciting 
is past; instances are exceedingly rare where a print¬ 
ing house can depend for business upon a choice fac¬ 
tory or office location, upon lack of competition, or 
upon any other one advantage. Printing is not usually 
“ordered” by the customer; it is “sold” to him, and in 
order to make the selling department of a modern 
printing plant effective, producing results by econom¬ 
ical effort and expense, there must be a definite plan of 
action. The selling of the product must be systematized 
and put upon a sound business basis. 

Half a billion dollars is the sum said to be spent each 
year for magazine and newspaper advertising, which 
sum is probably three or four times as much as is ex¬ 
pended for printed advertising used in direct adver¬ 
tising campaigns. This is not because advertising in 
regular publications is better or cheaper than adver¬ 
tising sent direct to the prospect, but is a result of the 
selling plan by which much of this space is sold. Every 
city has its advertising agencies which, acting as go- 


Possibilities of Direct Advertising 19 

betweens for the publishers and the public, solicit ad¬ 
vertising space for any publication that the buyer may 
choose. They receive from the publishers a commission 
ranging from ten to twenty-five per cent for the orders 
they secure. Many advertisers will admit, often en¬ 
thusiastically, that direct advertising has given them 
better returns than their newspaper and magazine 
publicity; but the printing trade has no such powerful 
organization to solicit business, and the result is that 
printed advertising is not so generally used as publi¬ 
cation space. 

Direct advertising is coming into its own, however, 
and the amount of printed matter used by advertisers 
to put their stories direct into the hands of prospective 
buyers is increasing each year, and the printer who is 
alert to take advantage of the all too few conditions 
which seem to favor him will not be slow to profit from 
the increasing popularity and use of printed advertis¬ 
ing in campaigns of this kind. 

Every printing concern of any considerable size 
should have a well-organized selling department, for 
handling all of those details incident to the securing 
of orders. The printer’s own advertising, the soliciting 
of salesmen, window displays, correspondence regard¬ 
ing inquiries and orders, and any other items pertain¬ 
ing to the marketing of the product, should be handled 
by this department. A competent head of the depart¬ 
ment should direct the work along all these lines, and 


20 Work of the Selling Department 

an accurate record should be kept of the total expenses 
incurred in getting business, and of the results secured. 

The selling department should be a selling unit, each 
factor strengthening and helping all the others. Every 
salesman or worker in the business office should be 
shown how to do his own work without waste of time or 
effort, and he should be encouraged to offer sugges¬ 
tions that will make the department more effective in 
securing orders at satisfactory prices. The coopera¬ 
tion of the heads of the various departments of one of 
the big daily papers of the country recently came un¬ 
der my observation. At nine o’clock each morning, all 
these heads meet together with the business manager, 
editor and owners to talk over the plans for the day 
and to offer suggestions. This gathering is facetiously 
called the “mothers’ meeting,” but the good that comes 
from the few minutes spent together is every day ap¬ 
parent in the successful paper published. If a printing 
business is large enough such a plan might well be fol¬ 
lowed, with a view to standardizing the selling of print¬ 
ing and making the work of selling more effective. 

Taking up some of the principal divisions in the sell¬ 
ing department, advertising, personal solicitation and 
mail orders are perhaps most important. I have put 
advertising first because of the wonderful possibilities 
it offers in the selling campaign. The printer’s own ad¬ 
vertising has, nevertheless, been neglected, abused and 
kicked around until many printers give it little or no 


Systematic Cooperative Advertising 21 

attention. In a business where most of the orders are in 
the form of printed advertising for business men in 
other lines, the advertising of the printer ought to be 
a model of excellence; it ought to be as good as or bet¬ 
ter than the advertising of any other trade or line. In 
what other business can the merchant send out an ad¬ 
vertisement that is, at the same time, a sample of the 
goods he has to sell? Yet the printer’s advertising is 
always just this, and if it is slovenly done the public 
will not care to buy goods “like the sample” for use 
in its advertising. 

It is not alone the quality of the printed advertising 
of the plant that is important. Of even greater impor¬ 
tance is the plan behind the printed publicity and the 
method of distributing it. Good advertisers know what 
they are going to do for months or a year ahead, and 
they know how they are going to do it. The printer 
should be equally systematic, and he should plan the 
advertising for some time in the future. Lists of pros¬ 
pective customers should be compiled, and printed ad¬ 
vertising sent out to these lists in accordance with a 
prearranged system, each advertisement having some 
connection with those that precede and follow it. The 
advertising should be cooperative with the work of the 
salesmen, and if the results of the advertising are re¬ 
corded and tabulated, plans for the future can be 
intelligently based on the results of the past. Without 
going into the details of the kind of copy that should 


22 Personality of the Salesmen 

be used for advertising printing, it may be said that all 
the printing should rate high by the following stand¬ 
ards: a live subject likely to be interesting to the 
reader; strong, convincing English in the copy; ap¬ 
propriate illustrations and correct display; good com¬ 
position and presswork; and suitable binding. 

The work of salesmen, whether city or traveling, 
should be directed work. Calling lists should be made 
up and adhered to; they should be corrected and re¬ 
vised frequently. The salesmen should be shown the 
help that the advertising is to them and should be 
required to cooperate with it. 

The personality of a salesman is unquestionably of 
great value to those he represents if it is a good one. 
By means of this he makes and holds business friends, 
secures orders he would not otherwise get, and thus 
wins business for his house. The salesman should always 
remember that his personality is, to the buyer, the 
personality of the house, and the conscientious sales¬ 
man will sink his individuality in the name of the firm 
he represents. The manager or head of the selling de¬ 
partment should keep in close touch with a salesman’s 
patrons so that they will feel that their business is with 
the house rather than with the individual salesman. 
We frequently hear of a salesman who leaves one house 
to associate himself with another and carries with him 
all or most of the customers that he has been selling. 
The salesman is not to blame for this condition; it is 


Should Make Calls Regularly 23 

the manager who is at fault in not binding the sales¬ 
man’s patrons more closely to the establishment. 

Solicitors should be encouraged in forming habits of 
calling on customers or prospects regularly; the neces¬ 
sity of always having something new and interesting to 
talk about should be made plain to them, and the meth¬ 
ods by which some salesmen are more than ordinarily 
successful should be investigated and offered for the 
use of the other representatives. Cooperative work al¬ 
ways beats individual effort, and there is much to learn 
by the ordinary printer salesman as evidenced by the 
average salaries paid for such work. A few salesmen 
may be underpaid, but most of them are paid at a rate 
commensurate with their ability as shown by their 
sales. Education along the lines of selling methods will 
raise the standard of work and of salaries, and should 
thus be a subject of mutual interest to both employer 
and employee. 

Selling printing by mail, which will be covered more 
fully in a later chapter of this book, is another impor¬ 
tant department of the selling end of printing. Every 
plant can do something to secure mail-order business, 
and small starts have often led to considerable success. 
In selling printing by mail it is necessary to avoid 
those classes of work which the plant is not equipped 
for handling. An occasional order can be sent out to be 
done, but most of the business should be printing that 
can be done in the house. Service and prompt delivery 


24 Broken Promises Unpardonable 

are requisites in supplying customers in other cities 
and towns, and the handling of details must be done 
with great vigilance. Every statement or promise made 
in a letter should be rigidly adhered to. If some print¬ 
ers are as careless in making and keeping their prom¬ 
ises regarding mail orders as they are in handling the 
local work, their mail-order path, if they have one, 
must be a thorny one. 

Broken promises are doubtlessly a blot upon the 
whole printing trade. Promises are usually carelessly 
made and more carelessly kept. The American public 
is fairly familiar with this laxity in keeping promises 
regarding delivery, and this is one reason why the 
printing trade is not held in higher regard. 

This very condition of affairs provides the oppor¬ 
tunity for good advertising by the printer who actu¬ 
ally does keep his promises. A London (England) firm 
recently issued a large folder to impress its patrons 
with its regard for promises concerning work. The 
folder indicates that printers’ promises are as lightly 
given and kept in England as in this country, but the 
advertisement and the way the subj ect is treated might 
be adapted by many American printers, after a solemn 
resolve had been made to avoid broken promises in the 
future. 

The following extracts from the folder referred to 
indicate the way in which the subject is treated by this 
enterprising English firm: 


A London Printer's Folder 


25 


With pride we say it: 

Our promises are always kept. 

We miss a lot of work that we could have, simply because we 
will not mislead the client; we will not take an order from a firm 
unless we know we can do it to time. 

With the best intentions we could take all orders offered and 
“try to deliver” at the time wanted, but that is not “Hotspur” 
policy. 

The “Hotspur” way spells c-e-r-t-a-i-n-t-y. 

When you give the order, and we give the delivery promise, 
only earthquakes, strikes and fires can make us break our word. 

And you know how rare those eventualities are in English 
printing. 

You also know, if you have dealt much with printers, the value 
of a promise—our promise—upon which you can rely. 

So, for your next job, talk to us, write us or let us talk to you. 

Send us your name; we’ll come and tell you more about this 
service and printing certainty which is gradually bringing all 
other printers nearer to a true realization of the obligations be¬ 
hind their promises. 

A most interesting piece of printers’ advertising 
was recently produced by the Smith-Brooks Printing 
Company, indicating one way in which the product of 
the presses may be sold by promoting the use of some 
particular kind of printing. The copy used for one of 
the advertisements follows: 

Turning Color Into Sales 

Pictures sold two hundred million dollars’ worth of goods for 
three firms last year. The three firms are Montgomery Ward & 
Co., Baltimore Bargain House and Sears, Roebuck & Co. 

None of these firms employs a single salesman. They depend 


26 


Advocating the Use of Color 

entirely upon printed matter to sell their goods. They show a 
picture of every article they sell— 

—and every year they are showing more and more of these 
pictures in full color. 

For example, at the time Sears, Roebuck & Co. were using 
one-color illustrations in their shoe catalog their annual shoe 
sales totaled $1,250,000. 

One year as an experiment they printed the pictures of their 
shoes in two and three colors. 

And that year their shoe sales increased to $4,000,000. They 
have since applied the use of color to the clothing, vehicle and 
several other sections of their catalog— 

—because it pays them to use color. 

To show manufacturers and all other should-be users of color 
plates and printing the value of the use of color in selling goods, 
the Smith-Brooks Company has issued a portfolio 8%xl2% in 
size showing ten commercial subjects in four colors. It is en¬ 
titled “Turning Color Into Sales.” It is an expensive book and it 
cannot be distributed broadcast. It will be sent free to any firm 
that is interested enough to write for a copy. It is an eye-opener 
as to the possibilities of more and cheaper sales. 


Chapter Four 


How to Secure Printing Orders 

I N no line of trade is competition any keener than in 
the printing industry. There are a number of good 
reasons why this is so. There are no standards of 
value, because the cost system has not been universally 
adopted; every printing establishment solicits orders, 
because printing is one line where soliciting is entirely 
ethical, and the diversified characters of the printing 
salesmen also tend to make competition close. The field 
is also overcrowded in many cities and towns, where 
printers must divide the total trade of a limited terri¬ 
tory, resulting in serious price cutting. 

If there are any principles, therefore, which a sales¬ 
man can rely on to give him an advantage over his com¬ 
petitors when grades and prices are about the same, 
the ambitious salesman wants to know what they are. 

I believe that the greatest single advantage a sales¬ 
man can have is his own personality, whether natural 
or cultivated. The old comparison between the mere 
order taker, who simply writes down the order without 
selling effort on his part, and the real salesman, who 
secures the order in the face of strenuous competition 
or apathy on the part of the buyer, hinges upon this 
one thing—personality. An old salesman of printing 
and stationery recently told me that personality is of 



28 


Bringing in the Orders 

even greater importance than price, and from my own 
experience I cannot but agree with him. 

At one time I handled the account of a large firm 
that purchased from four thousand to five thousand 
dollars per month in stationery, office supplies and 
printing. Scores of competitors were constantly bid¬ 
ding for this business, but with small success, and the 
buyer was kind enough to tell me that it was my own 
personality that brought the orders to my house rather 
than the prestige of that house or even its prices or 
service in filling the orders that I secured. As the buyer 
was not personally acquainted with any other repre¬ 
sentative of my house I took his statement as true, and 
offer it here, not to boom my own particular brand of 
personality, but to impress upon other salesmen the 
importance of cultivating a personality that will bring 
about more and larger sales from the business houses 
upon whom they call. 

There is but little credit as a salesman due to the 
man who secures a printing order simply because his 
price is lower than competing quotations. The man 
who gets the order, even though his price is higher, is 
the real salesman, the desirable representative. He is 
justly entitled to all the honors that rightfully belong 
to the successful American salesman, the one most im¬ 
portant cog in the machine of present-day commerce. 
And this suggests that the correct basis for paying 
salesmen is a percentage of the profits of the orders 


29 


Obliging the Customer 

they handle rather than a percentage on the amount 
of their sales. A salesman is entitled to payment on 
this basis, and such an arrangement should be an in¬ 
centive to get better prices for the house represented. 

The head of a business college which buys thousands 
of dollars’ worth of printing and stationery every year 
paid a high tribute to the salesman who handled these 
orders. In the house-organ of the school he published 
a paragraph something like this: “The representative 
of a certain stationery house who has for some time 
been calling at the college office and handling our or¬ 
ders for office and school supplies recently showed by 
a small incident the real reason why he has been able to 
hold our business in these lines in the face of competi¬ 
tion, and the incident may well serve as a valuable 
practical illustration to the young people in whose 
success this school is always interested. The school 
wanted a small order filled quickly for some unexpected 
additions to our class in typewriting. I accidentally 
met the salesman referred to on the street, gave him 
the order and explained the necessity for quick de¬ 
livery. Although he was just turning in to an office 
where he had a large contract pending, he postponed 
his call, and immediately telephoned and arranged to 
have the order delivered to us at once, although he was 
aware that the stock would first have to be delivered 
to his own house and through his house’s delivery de¬ 
partment to us. He arranged all of this by telephone, 


30 Courtesy , Promptness , Accuracy 

with quick and satisfactory results. It is attention of 
this kind that is appreciated, and we predict a brilliant 
future for this young salesman.” 

Such qualities as courtesy, promptness, accuracy, 
accommodation, enthusiastic interest, attention to 
small details, care and exactitude are what constitute 
service in a business house, and these same qualities go 
to make up the personal service of a salesman. The 
salesman who is willing to go out of his way to oblige 
a customer will find that when competition arises he 
will have an advantage over the more careless or un¬ 
tried salesman of a rival house. Treat your customer 
just a little better than he expects to be treated if that 
be possible, and your reports will show sales instead of 
blanks. Service that serves is what customers want and 
will pay for with orders. 

In addition to attributes named, appearance, man¬ 
ner of talking and general conduct while in the office of 
a patron contribute largely to personality, and play 
an important part in the opinion the customer forms 
of a salesman. Cultivate a pleasing and accommodat¬ 
ing personality. It is more effective than the giving of 
cigars or the buying of dinners for your customers, al¬ 
though these things have their proper place. It is your 
everyday business relations with the buyers that count 
most when orders are to be placed. If the customer 
knows that your word can be relied on, that your 
knowledge and judgment are dependable, and that you 


The Human Element in a Sale 31 

are obliging and eager to serve, no matter what com¬ 
petition you may have you will stand well with him. 

Modern business is coming to mean the selling of 
goods of merit at a profit—goods that the buyer can 
put to profitable use without disappointment. 

The young salesman who starts out with a proper 
appreciation of the principles here laid down will suc¬ 
ceed and rise faster than the frivolous representative 
who depends rather upon the reputation of the house 
he represents or his ability to quote lower prices than 
his competitors. The personal contact between buyer 
and seller is the principal reason why salesmen are em¬ 
ployed. If it were not for the human element in a sale, 
all business might be conducted by catalogs or through 
the mails. But this human element is so important that, 
no matter how much the mail-order method of doing 
business may increase, the good salesman will always 
be in demand, and the fact that the salesman of proved 
ability need never look long for a position furnishes 
food for reflection. 

An interesting prize competition was conducted by 
the first business show held at Los Angeles, Cal. A 
silver cup was offered for the best definition in fifty 
words of a salesman. Many and varied were the defini¬ 
tions received, but among them there were several 
which seemed to point particularly to the printing 
salesman. The following are representative and perti¬ 
nent: 


32 


Definitions of a Salesman 

“A God-fearing, healthy, ambitious, loyal, willing-to-learn- 
more human being, who has investigated his field of endeavor 
and resolved to fulfill his position of trust and representation to 
the best interests of mankind.” 

“He must first educate himself in the goods he is selling, know 
where and how they are made, and if possible be able to manu¬ 
facture the goods himself. He must have confidence in the goods 
he handles and the firm he works for. He must tell the truth. He 
must educate himself that what he says is so, and he will have no 
trouble in convincing the buyer in his statements.” 

“Properly to impress a business man and to obtain his patron¬ 
age, one must show that he labors earnestly, zealously and capa¬ 
bly in the interest of both his client and firm, with a thoroughly 
clean conscience coupled with that certain honesty peculiar to the 
man of heart—one who is fair to the people.” 

“Salesmanship consists in the ability so to throw yourself into 
the atmosphere of the customer as to make your personality his, 
his desire yours, and the unity of the two producing a harmoni¬ 
ous situation which must lead to results.” 

But little has been done toward organizing the 
printing salesmen of this country, although some of the 
trade organizations have taken the first steps toward 
effecting some sort of working agreement and coopera¬ 
tive association of their salesmen. It would be helpful 
to the entire printing trade to have the men who sell 
the goods meet together in local organizations, with 
perhaps a national body with which the locals might be 
affiliated. We have organizations of local secretaries of 
printers’ organizations, superintendents’ associations, 
and organizations of rulers, bookbinders, managers, 


Salesmen Should Be Supported 33 

foremen and photo-engravers. A live organization of 
printing salesmen in every large city, with educational 
work as a prominent feature, is quite feasible and 
within the scope of the activities of the local printers’ 
organizations. New York has made such a start. It 
may be true, as has been said, that it is difficult to get 
a good printing salesman because all of the good men 
are employed; but there is a field of work that many 
good men are overlooking—the field in which the sales¬ 
man can be of assistance in raising the standard of 
work sold. A good salesman should constantly try to 
sell better printing. 

The man who decides to make the selling of printing 
his life work, or who shows a real, active interest in his 
vocation, should be encouraged to originate selling 
plans and be supported in every possible way. Loyalty 
and maximum effort are two of the requisites most to 
be desired in a salesman, and the house he represents 
can do much to promote both. 

An eastern manufacturing house, not in the print¬ 
ing line, has worked out a plan that seems adapted to 
printing salesmen, and that has many advantages, an 
important one of which is that the plan obviates fre¬ 
quent or yearly adjustments of salary or commission 
on a new basis. The concern referred to engages a 
salesman at an agreed salary and with the understand¬ 
ing that his sales for the first year are expected to 
reach a stipulated amount. On sales over this amount 


34 A Satisfactory Remuneration Plan 

a commission of five per cent is paid him above his sal¬ 
ary. The second year, if his sales have exceeded this 
minimum, his salary is increased to total his salary 
and commission of the first year, and sales for the sec¬ 
ond year are expected to reach the total for the previ¬ 
ous twelve months, plus one thousand dollars. If his 
sales the second year are larger than this minimum, 
five per cent commission is paid him on the excess. This 
plan is continued, year after year, and has brought 
good results in increased sales and satisfactory work. 
Such an arrangement with salesmen of printing would 
eliminate many of the present difficulties and seems to 
present an adequate and just method of arriving at 
the proper remuneration for a printing salesman. In 
setting the minimum sales expected for any year, the 
profit on these sales should be considered; as selling 
expense, whether in the form of salary or commission 
to the salesman, advertising or other expense, should 
not exceed a fixed percentage of the profits on the 
work. 


Chapter Five 


Improvement of the Trade 

S OME really remarkable results have been accom¬ 
plished in the printing trade from the coopera¬ 
tion of master printers in the past few years, and 
these results are not alone along the line of financial 
profit but in friendship, acquaintance and a better 
spirit among men who are naturally competitors. It 
was not many years ago that a man in the printing 
business regarded all his competitors as his personal 
enemies. He ascribed to them almost every moral de¬ 
linquency, and refused to credit them with business 
honor or truthfulness. Now in every large city compet¬ 
ing master printers gather in a friendly way at busi¬ 
ness meetings of their local organizations and at social 
luncheons, where competition is forgotten in educa¬ 
tional and other cooperative work for the good of the 
individual and of the trade. 

The benefits of becoming better acquainted have 
been proved to be real benefits, and the advantages of 
cooperation have been thoroughly demonstrated. 

Realizing that much has already been accomplished 
through local and national organizations of printers, 
there is still much good that can be done by organizing 
in cities and towns not now organized and by carrying 
on the departments of work already started and add¬ 
ing others as conditions warrant. 


36 A Standard of Prices Needed 

A broad field for organization effort is in establish¬ 
ing some sort of standard of prices. It is small wonder 
that the layman often says that “something must be 
the matter with the printing business” when he gets 
quotations from three competing printers in his home 
town varying from eight to twenty dollars for the same 
job. This is a condition that should not prevail, and if 
prices cannot be brought nearer to some sort of uni¬ 
formity through organization, it will never be accom¬ 
plished. It has been conclusively proved that hour costs 
do not vary greatly in the large shop and the small one, 
and that costs in the small town and the city are not 
far apart. Education along cost-finding methods and 
class work in estimating would seem to be the remedy 
for such loose quoting of prices, and it is to the interest 
of every printer not only to know his own costs but to 
have his competitor equally familiar with estimating 
and cost-finding. Printers must educate their competi¬ 
tors as well as themselves if they are to receive the full 
benefits of cooperation. 

There is room for further development in the credit 
and collection departments of printers’ organizations, 
and it is quite possible to perfect these departments so 
that no buyer of printing can leave more than one un¬ 
paid bill behind him. Undesirable patrons who do not 
pay their bills should be reported at once and the trade 
saved from further loss. 

Local organizations should always be willing to co- 


37 


The Board-of-Trade Plan 

operate with other civic bodies in upholding home insti¬ 
tutions and in promoting home trading. The right kind 
of appeal to civic pride will influence many people to 
leave their orders for printing with their home-town 
printers, and, by cooperating with other local manu¬ 
facturers, home-town goods may be made very attrac¬ 
tive. Newspaper articles showing the importance and 
scope of the printing trade to a town, the value of the 
annual product, the amount of the printing pay roll, 
etc., are excellent in getting public sentiment headed 
the right way. 

The real value of the board-of-trade method of up¬ 
holding prices in the printing trade has long been a 
mooted question, and representative leaders of the 
trade do not, and perhaps never will, agree upon the 
relative importance of fixing prices and cooperating 
with their competitors along board-of-trade lines. 

As a premise to an intelligent discussion of this im¬ 
portant phase of marketing printing, a definition of 
j ust what the board-of-trade plan is may be helpful to 
a better understanding of the apparent advantages 
and disadvantages of this matter of dealing with the 
public. It is, then, the cooperation of a number of 
printers in a city to uphold prices that will allow a 
reasonable profit on their orders. This is accomplished 
by maintaining a central office with the secretary as its 
head. This office is presumed to be the clearing house, 
as it were, for every important job of printing upon 


38 How the Plan Works 

whicli any associated member may be asked to quote 
prices. 

The common method followed is this: A prospective 
buyer of printing asks one of the members of the board 
of trade for a price on a certain job of work. This 
printer tells him that he will give him an estimate “To¬ 
morrow.” Then the printer notifies the secretary of 
the board of trade of the j ob, and it is mutually agreed 
with the other members of the association what price 
the first printer shall quote on the job. The other 
printers agree to protect him in his price, should they 
be asked to bid on the same job, and they frequently 
are; or the members may agree to let some printer 
other than the first one quoting secure the job by put¬ 
ting in the lowest bid. 

The secretary of one of these active organized asso¬ 
ciations recently told me that the plan was working 
fine in the particular city where he was located. “Our 
members are so mutually agreeable,” he told me, “that 
I have seen a number of printers come together in my 
office and decide who would get a five-thousand-dollar 
job by the flip of a coin.” This is probably an example 
of an extreme case of cooperation. 

On the other hand, I know of cities where a board of 
trade has been organized by the printers, not once but 
two or three times, to be abandoned each time, usually 
after a brief, stormy existence. The principal difficulty 
in such cases has been that the cooperating members 


39 


Drawbacks of the Plan 

of the association did not cooperate; each one was ap¬ 
parently suspicious of all the others, and, beginning 
by holding back information which should have been 
divulged for the good of all, the members of the asso¬ 
ciation allowed it finally to disintegrate by failing to 
report the prospective orders for printing that they 
had been asked to bid on. 

Another potent cause of the disintegration of these 
organizations was the fact that in each case there were 
several large- or medium-sized plants that would not 
join the association and that would frequently under¬ 
bid the board-of-trade prices for work decided on by 
the members. Then the job would go to the printer who 
did not belong to the board of trade, and there was 
general dissatisfaction as a result. Further, the public 
is not slow in learning that a board of trade is in ex¬ 
istence in its midst, and printing buyers are prone to 
look upon such an organization as savoring of trust 
methods. They quite naturally prefer to patronize the 
printer who tells them he is “independent” and “out¬ 
side the trust.” 

The board-of-trade idea is not adapted to useful¬ 
ness in the small community; and even in the large 
city, where it has been most successful, it is not des¬ 
tined, I believe, completely to control the situation. In 
some cities the federal authorities have opposed the 
board of trade on the ground that it was a violation of 
the anti-trust laws. The principal obstacle, however, 


40 Laws Should not Be Violated 

has been that the members are not loyal to their obli¬ 
gations, and the organization has died because of this 
lack of cooperation. 

Better success might be achieved along board-of- 
trade lines if no attempt were to be made to fix prices 
or to set minimum rates below which the members 
might not go in their bids. If the organization were 
purely educational, directed to show the members the 
folly of marketing their product below the cost mark, 
in time the effect might be much better than the efforts 
to protect members in holding their trade. 

In organizing any association of printers, one of the 
first and most important considerations should be to 
make the objects and operation of the organization 
perfectly legitimate by keeping it entirely within the 
laws regulating trusts. Legal advice should be sought 
to avoid any actual or technical violation of federal 
statutes designed for the protection of the people from 
illegitimate combinations in restraint or control of 
trade. The printing trade needs no violation of any 
trust laws to uphold it, and local clubs of printers can 
accomplish everything necessary without violating any 
provision of our national laws. 

The old adage, “In union there is strength,” seems 
to apply with particular force to the printing trade, 
and it is difficult to find adequate reasons why printers 
have been so dilatory in organizing for mutual benefit. 
The master printers have long had the example of the 


In Union There Is Strength 41 

typographical union before them, and they have been 
familiar with the benefits of organization to the em¬ 
ployee ; but until recent years they seem to have pre¬ 
ferred to fight singly against the enemies of fair prices 
and reasonable profits. It has been a case of every man 
for himself, with every one else against him. The pro¬ 
prietor of a printshop had to fight the public, and he 
had to fight his competitors also; often he was arrayed 
against his own workmen in settling claims or griev¬ 
ances of the union. Happily, this condition is now 
changed in a measure, but the master printers are still 
far behind their own employees in the matter of organ¬ 
ization. The benefits of the United Typothetae and 
Franklin Clubs, cost congresses and other master- 
printers’ organizations are so apparent that it is diffi¬ 
cult to see how a man in the printing business can be so 
blind to his own interests as to refuse or neglect to 
affiliate himself with one or more of them. And his in¬ 
terest should not stop there, but should go out to in¬ 
clude every other printer in his territory. The interest 
of the individual is the interest of the whole trade, and 
the more general representation a printing organiza¬ 
tion has in the territory covered, the more effective 
work can be done. 

In hundreds of cities and towns in this country there 
is no local printers’ organization, and prices are cut 
and slashed because of ignorance of correct cost-find¬ 
ing methods and because of the old mistaken idea of 


42 Success of Printers' Organizations 

competition. In these localities it should be the self- 
constituted work of one or more of the men in the craft 
to effect an organization and to make its advantages 
so clear and so prominent to the other printers that 
their interest and membership may be secured. The 
local should affiliate with a national body and so profit 
from the great American campaign of education that 
is being carried on. The Typothetae, in particular, has 
been most liberal in helping new local organizations to 
get well started and established on a solid foundation. 
This interest has not been confined merely to moral 
support, but financial help has been given, organizers 
and cost experts sent out, lectures arranged and many 
other helps furnished. The national organization bears 
the same relation to the locals that the local does to the 
individual members and should be just as fully sup¬ 
ported. 

The success of printers’ organizations, national as 
well as local, depends very largely upon publicity and 
printed matter. And the attitude of the trade press to¬ 
ward organization work has been of great assistance 
in the emancipation of the printing business through 
cooperation. Almost every trade journal in the print¬ 
ing field has been not only liberal but impartial in 
treating matters pertaining to organization. The offi¬ 
cial organs of the national organizations and of some 
of the locals are also effective means of promoting asso¬ 
ciation work, and a few of the daily and weekly news- 


Publicity Necessary and Helpful 43 

papers have given the subject serious consideration, 
particularly on the occasions of national conventions. 
The importance of these means toward more effective 
community work should not be underestimated. All 
printers should appreciate and encourage such pub¬ 
licity. 


Chapter Six 


The Folly of Price Cutting 

T HE cutting of prices to the point where there is 
little or no profit (often a loss) is one of the 
worst evils of the trade, and the work of the cost 
congresses and printers’ organizations along educa¬ 
tional lines has shown to the printers who are the suf¬ 
ferers from this custom how widespread this evil is. 

It is not difficult to prove conclusively why it is a 
detriment to the individual printer and to the trade in 
general to sell the product at a price that will not show 
a reasonable profit, but to do away with the nuisance 
is a task worthy of the best efforts of every man who 
has the opportunity or influence to do something to 
uplift the craft from this cutting of prices. 

Printers cut prices for several reasons. Often they 
do so through ignorance. I have seen printers contend 
that they had made money on certain jobs in the face 
of the most positive evidence to the contrary. Careless 
estimating and price making are responsible for many 
other cut prices. The printer who makes a practice of 
guessing that a job will cost a certain amount will sell 
his work at a loss or less about as often as he will get 
a fair price or an exorbitant one. 

Competition is also frequently responsible for cut 
prices. When the customer boldly announces that 



45 


Keeping the Plant Busy 

“Jones offered to do this job for five dollars, but if you 
want it you can have it,” he will often get it done his 
way and at his price. The printer is afraid to take a 
stand for what he may know is the right price and fool¬ 
ishly lets the customer make the price for him, a condi¬ 
tion that does not so generally prevail in any other 
trade with which I am familiar. 

The fourth reason for cut prices is a mistaken idea 
that the plant can be kept busy in this way. This is a 
fallacy, because cut prices do not create new business. 
They benefit only the customer, and it is rare that the 
cutting of a price to cost will induce a man to order 
work that he was not disposed to buy. 

Every printer should study these things and see for 
himself how entirely foolish it is to expect to conduct 
his business successfully in this way. None of the rea¬ 
sons given are valid when subjected to close scrutiny, 
and the printer who cultivates an independent spirit 
and stops worrying about what the other fellow is do¬ 
ing will be able to retire to a life of ease when his price- 
cutting, worrying competitors are growing gray in a 
service that becomes more irksome each year. 

Education in cost-finding methods will in time dissi¬ 
pate ignorance and have a large influence in putting 
prices where they should be. Carelessness can be over¬ 
come by cultivating the habit of exactness in all mat¬ 
ters, especially in the checking of estimates. A stiff 
backbone will discourage the customer who wants to 


46 


Fluctuations in Business 


make the prices on his own work, and a little consider¬ 
ation of the question of keeping the plant busy when 
there is a dearth of orders will convince any one that it 
is a mistake to look on the “filler” job as advantageous. 

The fluctuations in the business of the ordinary 
commercial printing plant might well be compared to 
the waves of the ocean, which rise to a crest, and then 
fall away to form a trough. In most plants the volume 
of business often rises far above the capacity of the 
shop for a few days or weeks, to be followed by a de¬ 
pression, or dearth of orders, which makes it necessary 
either to enforce vacations on some of the employees or 
to keep them on the pay roll even though there is little 
or nothing for them to do. 

This condition is the bane of the printing business, 
and is a problem requiring the best business judgment 
for its solution. It is a particularly difficult situation 
in localities where good printers are scarce, because 
the employer is loath to “lay off” his good men, know¬ 
ing that if he does this frequently they will probably 
secure work elsewhere, perhaps with his most active 
competitor, and when business improves it will be hard 
to replace them with men equally as good. 

The condition described has brought about the 
“filler” job, known to every plant. Such work is taken 
at cost, or at a price a little over or under cost, with 
the excuse that it is better to keep the men employed 
and the plant running, even on work that pays little if 


Fillers Tend to Lower Prices 


47 


an y profit, than to break up the force or have men and 
machinery idle. The value ascribed to the “filler” is a 
complete fallacy. It is not better to keep the plant run¬ 
ning on unprofitable work; it is much better to close 
down part or all of the departments. 

The filler job exercises a tendency toward lower 
prices; it is an injustice to regular patrons and an 
injury to the entire trade. Printers should learn to 
secure a satisfactory volume of business by advertising 
or soliciting rather than by this mistaken idea that 
unprofitable work is ever an advantage. Patience may 
be necessary and time is often required to secure an 
amount of work to keep men and equipment working 
nearly to the capacity of the plant, but the filler is a 
delusion and can be defended only in the rarest of 
cases. 

It is not wise to attempt to run the plant at full 
capacity except at good prices, and many large print¬ 
ing houses do a profitable business each year with sev¬ 
eral cylinder presses idle much of the time. I know of 
one firm, in particular, that has even made an asset out 
of the fact that there are always two or more presses 
idle and ready to be used on a “rush” job that competi¬ 
tors could not produce within the required time. The 
printing of ballots and other election supplies must 
often be done within a limited time, fixed by law; and 
the plant that has a reputation for promptness, and is 
known to have the facilities for handling quick work of 


48 


Every Job Should Make a Profit 

this kind on presses not always in use, will usually get 
this sort of work. 

The real and lasting benefits of conducting a print¬ 
ing business on the principle that every job produced 
must be as near perfect as possible, and that every job 
must pay a fair profit, were impressed upon me by the 
experience of an Iowa printer, who recently retired 
from business, having accumulated sufficient money 
from his printing business, conducted in this way, to 
enable him to quit. His hobbies were always to have 
sufficient material in the plant, to require every work¬ 
man to do the best work he was capable of, and always 
to get a profitable price for the product. He was many 
times called a “crank” and was as often laughed at. 
He would refuse to accept work at prices which did 
not seem high enough to show a profit on the high grade 
he turned out; but he gathered a clientele of customers 
who wanted good work and were willing to pay his 
price for it, and he vindicated his own principles by 
accumulating a small fortune. 

Such a man should be a pattern to the printing fra¬ 
ternity. And there is an example in almost every city 
of the truth of the statement that competition may be 
met without cutting the price. There is everywhere a 
class of people who want the best printing, the same as 
they want the best of everything they buy; and it is 
possible to show these people that they cannot get the 
best printing at the lowest price. Service and results 


49 


Cheap Work and Better Orders 

may be used to offset the low price of a competitor, 
and they may be made very attractive. 

The small printer can compete with the larger house 
by promising his personal attention in securing just 
the sort of work desired, and the large house can com¬ 
pete with the small, price-cutting printer by argu¬ 
ments just as powerful, regarding its equipment and 
ability to handle the work satisfactorily. I realize that 
there is a part of the buying public that seems to value 
a low price more than any other inducement, but when 
a printer has once demonstrated conclusively to such a 
buyer that the quality of his work or his service is 
worth what he charges, his bids for business, based on 
these two things, will be much more favorably received. 
Some firms divide up their printing, giving the cheap, 
common work out on a basis of price only, but reserv¬ 
ing the better orders for the printer who they know by 
past experience can deliver the quality of work re¬ 
quired, even though his prices are recognized as higher 
than those of competing firms. The printer who gets 
this particular work will succeed in building up an en¬ 
viable reputation that competing firms will find hard 
to combat. A reputation for high-quality work is cer¬ 
tainly more to be desired than a reputation for being 
ft “cheap printer.” 

The advertising-service department, treated more 
fully in another of these chapters, affords a splendid 
opportunity to combat the low- or cut-price evil. The 


50 


A Practice That Is Ruinous 


printer who can show his customers that he is more 
than a printer will have less trouble in getting fair 
prices for his work than the one who depends solely 
upon a low price to get his orders. The advice of print¬ 
ers is frequently sought by advertisers in making their 
printed publicity more effective, and when a big buyer 
of printed advertising finds that the suggestions and 
advice of a printer are based upon sound principles 
and extended experience in getting tangible results for 
other advertisers, he must, in the very nature of things, 
favor that printer in placing his printing orders. 

There is no justification whatever for cutting prices 
below the cost mark. The practice is ruinous to the 
printer’s own business ; it injures his standing with his 
customers, and, if his banker knows that he makes price 
cutting a common practice, it will ruin his credit at the 
bank. Bankers never cut prices below cost, and there 
is no trade or profession that I know of in which the 
pernicious practice of cutting prices to cost or less is 
anywhere near so common as it is in printing. 

I presume that the sharp competition in the print¬ 
ing trade is back of all the reasons that may be ad¬ 
vanced as responsible for price cutting; and if this is 
so, cooperation and organization ought to provide the 
remedy. And they have, through educational methods, 
to a considerable extent. Fewer prices below cost are 
made now than there were before the advent of cost¬ 
finding systems, but the practice of quoting prices 


51 


The Reforms of the Craft 

perilously near the cost of production, with a full 
knowledge of what he is doing, is a phase of the matter 
that requires backbone and firm determination on the 
part of the printer who makes a practice of doing it. 

The reforms of the craft, of which the abolition of 
price cutting is a most important one, must come about 
inside, not outside, the trade. They must receive their 
impetus from the innermost part of the inside, in the 
individual brains and minds of the men who direct the 
printing plants. An individual resolution, at New 
Year’s or on any other day, never knowingly to quote a 
price that does not include a reasonable and fair mar¬ 
gin of profit, should be made by every man whose busi¬ 
ness it is to make estimates and prices; and it is one 
resolution that he should regard as a sacred trust to 
keep, in spite of every temptation to recede from his 
stand. 

It is not fatal, nor even serious, to lose an occasional 
job on account of the price quoted. Many jobs are lost 
anyway, even when the prices quoted are so low as to 
mean a loss; so why not be content to lose a few orders 
in so good a cause as the righting of printing prices ? 
When a buyer finds that a certain printer will not take 
an order except it promises a profit, he will not lose his 
respect for that man or eliminate him from printing 
consideration. On the contrary, such a printer rises 
appreciably in the mind of the buyer. He will be con¬ 
sidered a better business man, capable of producing 


52 Respect of the Customer 

better work. The customer who secures a cutthroat 
price from a printer does not respect the man for the 
low price. He laughs in his sleeve at the foolishness of 
taking work at cost or less, even though he benefits by 
the condition. 


Chapter Seven 


The Psychology of Selling Printing 



S applied to the selling of printing, and without 


considering scientific terms and definitions, psy- 


-^-chology may be said to be the influencing of the 
human mind. A study of psychology is perforce a 
study of human nature, and the psychology of selling 
printing is making sales by compelling the prospect to 
think as the salesman wishes him to. Some of the state¬ 
ments in this chapter may impress the experienced 
salesman as being unnecessarily elemental, but since 
this book is intended to interest the beginner as well 
as the successful salesman, they are made so advisedly. 

The salesman who secures an order at a price con¬ 
siderably higher than that quoted by a rival printer 
gets the business, perhaps unconsciously, by psycho¬ 
logical means; and the power to make men see things 
as you want them to be seen is a psychological power, 
akin perhaps to a hypnotic impression. I once solic¬ 
ited business from a man I had never met before, and 
after I had impressed him, as I wished to do, with the 
superiority of the service I was offering him over the 
one he was using, he said: “You must be a hypnotist; 
before I talked with you I thought this thing was all 
right, but now I see how much better it can be done.” 
His remark has stuck in my mind ever since, and I con- 


54 Selling Printing Successfully 

sider that he implied a compliment in the statement. 
As we hear much of “inside baseball,” we might con¬ 
sider the selling of printing by psychological methods 
as “inside printing.” At least it involves a knowledge 
of the game not possessed by the solicitor with only a 
superficial familiarity with the trade. He must be for¬ 
tified with many things to sell the product of the print¬ 
ing press successfully. Every successful printing sales¬ 
man possesses psychological power, whether he realizes 
it or not. A pleasing personality, as exemplified in neat 
clothes, a suave, cheerful manner of speaking, correct 
use of language, manifest experience and knowledge of 
the line sold, the ability to read human nature quickly 
and accurately, the ability to make friends and keep 
them, the proper mixture of self-respect for the opin¬ 
ions of others, and forcefulness in closing a sale at the 
right moment, are all things which contribute in some 
degree to the psychological selling of printing. 

By considering some of these qualities which make 
up the individuality of a salesman, we may learn some¬ 
thing of their relative importance, their proper use, 
and how to cultivate them to greater profit in a busi¬ 
ness way. 

We often hear the remark made, “That man makes 
a good appearance.” Examined more closely, it may be 
seen that his “good appearance” is due more to neat¬ 
ness of person and clothing than to expensive, fashion¬ 
able clothes or to regular, handsome features. His gen- 


Conversational Methods Important 55 

eral appearance is pleasing because he looks clean and 
neat, and shows no evidence of bad habits. Such an ap¬ 
pearance is of great importance in selling goods. The 
printing salesman should look like a business man but 
not like a fashion plate, and he should radiate success 
and optimism in his personal appearance. 

The language and manner of speaking of the sales¬ 
man have an effect upon the prospect, influencing him 
either for or against the proposition he is asked to con¬ 
sider. Salesmen should therefore practice conversa¬ 
tional methods that make the right sort of impression. 
A common fault in many solicitors is a weak-kneed way 
of talking. They slur their words together, talk too 
fast, and are careless in their statements. A business 
man likes to have goods or service presented to him in 
clear-cut words, definite phrases and positive asser¬ 
tions, and he can be persuaded easier and quicker by 
this kind of speaking than by any other. It is perhaps 
needless to say that profanity and slang are out of 
place in the mouth of the salesman. 

Experience and a thorough knowledge of printing 
are essential to selling success, irrespective of their 
psychological importance. Some men who are thor¬ 
oughly familiar with the product hide their knowledge, 
however, through diffidence or a mistaken idea of their 
position. A man’s knowledge of his goods should radi¬ 
ate from him if he would impress the mind of the man 
he is trying to sell. He need not appear egotistical, but 


56 Reading the Human Mind 

should show that he is sure of his ground and that any 
statements he makes are backed up by the facts and a 
complete understanding of them. I never knew but one 
printing salesman who was even moderately successful 
without a comprehensive knowledge of the goods he was 
selling, and this one had so strong and pleasing a per¬ 
sonality that his “bluff” was seldom called, and he went 
on getting good orders, with very few of his custom¬ 
ers suspecting that he had only a superficial knowledge 
of printing and prices. 

The ability to read the human mind quickly and ac¬ 
curately is a most valuable trait in selling printing. A 
man’s words do not always convey what is passing in 
his mind, and the expression of the face, movements of 
the hands, etc., are more clearly indicative of his atti¬ 
tude than what he says. Following the line of least re¬ 
sistance is often an excellent policy to pursue in influ¬ 
encing a man so that he will decide to order. There are 
many details of-a printing job which do not materially 
affect the cost, and any preference of the customer, 
whether expressed by word or action, should be ac¬ 
ceded to cheerfully by the salesman, if by so doing he 
does not jeopardize his profits. 

The salesman who makes friends easily and keeps 
his friends is usually more successful than the one 
whose coldness keeps him from any intimacy with those 
he calls on. A business friend need not be a close, per¬ 
sonal friend, nor a friend of the salesman’s family; but 


Salesmen Should Be Good Listeners 57 

the friendship of business is an important factor in 
placing orders and should not be overlooked. A friendly 
spirit, manifested in a readiness to do a favor, is al¬ 
ways appreciated, and reciprocity is a great thing in 
modern business methods. The man who does a business 
favor to another or helps him to secure an order ex¬ 
pects and usually receives something in return. And 
the printing salesman can secure many an order by 
little helps of this kind, unobtrusively rendered to his 
customers and prospects. “Friendship based upon 
business, not business based upon friendship,” is a 
motto that hung for many years upon the wall in the 
office of a large New York printing establishment. 

The printing salesman should not overlook the im¬ 
portance of being a good listener. He will meet many 
men who like so well to hear their own voices in conver¬ 
sation that they must burden him with tales of their 
successes, their importance, their families and their 
plans for the future. The man who can patiently listen 
to these often uninteresting things will profit by his 
quiet attitude and will get orders with little effort in 
the way of argument. The customer thinks his own 
opinions are important, and he should be respected to 
the limit in his belief. A certain amount of self-respect 
on the part of the salesman is just as necessary, how¬ 
ever. The happy medium is to give the customer the 
benefit of any doubt concerning the relative import¬ 
ance of differing opinions and at the right moment 


58 Orders Lost Through Talking 

override his last objection to placing the order by a 
leading, forceful attitude. 

Many a salesman has talked himself out of an order 
because he did not know when to stop. He presents his 
proposition and his reasons why he should have the 
order; he convinces the prospect—and then he keeps 
on talking, not knowing that he is overstepping the 
mark. When the prospect has decided to place the or¬ 
der, then is the time to stop talking. Under ordinary 
circumstances, he will consider the matter settled and 
need not be further convinced. For this same reason, I 
dislike to submit more than one proof or more than one 
sketch, if the sale is a drawing. Each time you present 
something to the buyer to pass upon, you give him one 
more opportunity to change his mind and decide 
against his first judgment. 

Good collectors understand the value of silence and 
present a bill with few words. It is not the work of the 
collector to sell the work over again or to discuss its 
merits or demerits. 

There is one right time, in closing a sale, that should 
not be passed over. It is when the prospect indicates in 
some way that all his objections have been overruled or 
that he is almost persuaded. Then is the time to pre¬ 
sent the dotted line of the contract, if the transaction 
involves a written agreement. If it is a simple printing 
order, the right remark is something like this: “All 
right, Mr. Brown; just give me the copy and we will 


59 


Holding off the Decision 

begin the work at once and show you a proof on Mon¬ 
day.” If the details of the job are thoroughly under¬ 
stood by this time, the salesman should close his talk 
right there and with a pleasant “Good afternoon” or 
a “Thank you” for the order depart without further 
delay. 

If an order cannot be secured, after the salesman 
has presented his strongest arguments, backed up by a 
pleasant and impressive manner of presenting them, a 
last effort should be made to prevent the prospect from 
deciding against the house represented. Next to secur¬ 
ing the order, is to leave him undecided. Let him under¬ 
stand that the matter is considered to be still open, to 
be taken up again on another call; and when the sales¬ 
man calls again, he should have new reasons and inter¬ 
esting new points about the work to talk about. Print¬ 
ing orders cannot always be secured in a single call; 
usually they cannot, if the job is of considerable im¬ 
portance or involves a large expenditure of money. 
And there are few other lines of business that can be 
carried on with the one-call method. 

It requires diplomacy in large quantities and well 
applied to sell goods at a profit to the hard-to-please, 
the scolding buyer and the chronic faultfinder. A close 
study of the personality of these difficult customers 
will often show their weak points, however, and with 
the ice once broken the pleasanter side often appears 
and lasting business friendships sometimes result. The 


60 Reference to Competing Houses 

salesman should be careful not to antagonize these diffi¬ 
cult buyers unnecessarily; their peculiarities should 
be respected as far as possible. A man who makes bit¬ 
ter enemies often makes strong friendships, and the 
man who is high-strung, quick of temper, or naturally 
irritable, often has a softer side to his nature; if his 
confidence and good-will can be once secured, it will 
take more than the arguments of a competitor to take 
away his business. I have often noticed that the harder 
the business is to secure, the more desirable it is when 
once landed. The man who buys anything presented 
and without consideration of price is often slow in pay¬ 
ing his bills and sometimes does not pay them at all. 

Opinions differ widely as to the manner in which a 
salesman should refer, if at all, to competing houses 
and their work. It is evident, however, that a habit of 
“knocking” should be discouraged; and the fewer the 
allusions to a competing plant, the better will be the 
impression made. The buyer knows that a salesman 
does not usually have accurate information about com¬ 
peting houses, and he is apt to discount any statement 
that may be made. It is far better to ignore the exist¬ 
ence of competition, if possible, or to press home those 
arguments in favor of the shop represented, leaving 
the buyer to think what he will of the rival for the 
work. There is too much worrying, in the ranks of 
printers, about the other fellow, and the only concern 
that a master printer need have for his local or other 


61 


Psychological Methods in Selling 

rivals is that they know enough about costs in their 
own plants to refuse to take work excepting at a fair 
profit. 

Psychological methods are entering more and more 
into the selling of printing. Business efficiency is in¬ 
creasing in the printing industry as well as in other 
branches of commercial activity, and the study of hu¬ 
man nature is becoming more popular than in the days 
before the advent of cost-finding systems and modern 
methods of salesmanship and advertising. Good sales¬ 
men practice psychology on their customers, whether 
they recognize it under this name or not, and the sales¬ 
man who is really ambitious to become a recognized 
success in his vocation can well afford to give some lit¬ 
tle time each day or week to the study of how to influ¬ 
ence men’s minds. 


Chapter Eight 


The Advertising-Service Department 


NE of the comparatively new means of increas¬ 



ing the business of a printing plant is the ad- 


vertising-service department, designed to pro¬ 
vide a service for business houses in the preparation of 
the matter and production of their printed advertis¬ 


ing. 


The idea was born of the remark, often heard in 
the business office, “This is about what I want, but 
you fix it up right for me.” The customer usually ac¬ 
companies a statement of this kind with a handful of 
penciled memoranda, or in some cases illegible, un¬ 
grammatical, poorly spelled copy, which he wants to 
see emerge a highly attractive piece of printed pub¬ 
licity. Such a customer expects a printer to be more 
than a printer, and he should if possible be accommo¬ 
dated. 

There are a few large plants that have for many 
years furnished an advertising service to their pat¬ 
rons, which included the writing of copy, making of 
illustrations and engravings, and mailing, as well as 
the printing and binding necessary to produce printed 
advertising. It is only recently, however, that the idea 
has become so general that there is profit for the 
ordinary or small shop in providing a service of this 
kind; and it has been proved in many such instances 



Salesmen Who Can Talk Intelligently 63 

that an advertising-service department, covering all 
these branches of advertising work, and often other 
details connected with the placing of publicity in the 
hands of the prospect, can be handled to advantage 
by almost any printer who knows what is required. 

An advertising-service department makes it pos¬ 
sible for a printer to add to his business and to his 
profits without investing in more machinery or other 
equipment. If he has no one about the office who can 
write advertising copy, this part of the work can be 
turned over to an outside copy writer. The art work 
and engravings can be sent out, as they ordinarily 
would be, and the rest of the work can be done in the 
plant. It is also practical to compile and furnish mail¬ 
ing lists to be used in mailing the advertising. 

The prime requisite for the successful carrying out 
of a service department is a salesman who can talk 
intelligently and convincingly to prospective patrons 
of the department, and who is able to show them the 
advantages of ordering from one house all the details 
connected with a direct mailing campaign. This is 
one of the best talking points for business, and one 
that can be presented in a most favorable light. The 
salesman should endeavor to secure the order for all 
or as much of the work as he can secure, and it will 
be found best to quote a single price, covering all of 
the service to be performed rather than to submit a 
detailed bid, with separate prices for copy writing, 


64 The Practicability of Service 

cuts, printing, etc. Copy writers usually secure fairly 
good prices for their work, and, starting with a liberal 
estimate for the copy, and suggestive advice which 
should accompany it, the drawings, halftone or other 
plates, electrotypes, printing, binding, inclosing and 
mailing may each be added and the total price given 
as the quotation. 

If any printer doubts the practicability of an ad¬ 
vertising-service department, he need only talk the 
matter over with a few aggressive business men to find 
that such a service will be welcomed by them. Many 
successful heads of big businesses have expressed 
themselves in this way, for even the best of them find 
themselves short of ideas at times. 

When a printer once decides that an advertising- 
service department will be an excellent adjunct to his 
business, he should plan an advertising campaign to 
let the public know that he has such a service to offer. 
This advertising can be done in many ways. Pages 
describing the merits of this plan of buying advertis¬ 
ing matter can be run frequently in the house-organ, 
if one is published, or form letters and folders may 
be sent to a select list of prospective patrons of such 
a service. Such a mailing list should include the names 
and addresses of business firms known to use printed 
advertising liberally, and of new firms, manufacturers, 
wholesalers and retail dealers who conduct direct-ad¬ 
vertising campaigns. All such advertising is valuable 


Advertising the Department 65 

principally to induce inquiries, as it would be unrea¬ 
sonable to expect orders direct without explaining 
more fully the plan of providing a complete service. 
These inquiries should be followed up promptly with 
a personal call by the salesman or a personal letter. 
If the salesman is also the copy writer or understands 
something of advertising, he should be able to turn a 
good percentage of the inquiries into orders by show¬ 
ing the prospect how good advertising results may be 
secured by combining the customer’s intimate knowl¬ 
edge of his own goods with the advertising experience 
of the copy writer. 

The following advertising copy, which was used by 
a large western printing house in announcing an ad¬ 
vertising-service department, illustrates how the va¬ 
rious points of the service may be explained and made 
to appeal to the reader: 

We Have Just Opened Our New 
Advertising-Service Department 
for the convenience and assistance of our customers in carry¬ 
ing out their advertising plans. 

The work of this department covers the whole range of 
printed advertising and is designed to relieve business men of 
most of the detail work, enabling them to carry out a campaign 
at a great saving of time and effort. 

We will attend, through this new service department, to 
every detail of the work necessary in the preparation and mail¬ 
ing of printed advertising. 

We suggest plans and originate advertising ideas. 

We write the copy and suggest the form in which it should 
be printed. 


66 


The Kinds of Service 

We furnish illustrations and cuts of every kind. 

We read the proofs and do the printing. 

We inclose the printed matter in envelopes and mail it, when 
desired. 

Isn’t it much more convenient and a great saving of time 
for you to place your order for all these things with one reli¬ 
able house, rather than to have perhaps a half-dozen firms each 
do a part of the work? 

Suppose, for instance, that you wish to reach a thousand or 
ten thousand prospective buyers with a catalog, booklet or 
folder describing your line. By placing your order through our 
advertising-service department, we will go over the proposition 
thoroughly with you from an advertising standpoint, suggest¬ 
ing the paper, type, illustrations, and style of copy likely to be 
most productive of results. We then write the copy in strong, 
forceful English, combining your knowledge of your own goods 
with our advertising experience. When this copy is approved 
by you, we print the booklet or folder, reading the proofs and 
guarding against possible errors by close oversight, supplying 
such drawings, halftone cuts, zinc etchings or electrotypes as 
may be needed. We print the envelopes and inclose the booklets, 
also mail them for you if desired. 

For all this service we charge you one price, covering all 
the items of the service and advice indicated. 

Phone Main 4200, and ask for the advertising-service depart¬ 
ment, and our representative will call on you; or address a 
letter to the department and it will receive prompt attention 
with a comprehensive reply covering any points you may wish 
to be informed on. 

Try this new service in connection with your printed adver¬ 
tising, and you will recognize at once how convenient, econom¬ 
ical and satisfactory such a plan is. 

Many different kinds of printed advertising can be 
handled through the advertising-service department. 
Catalogs may be compiled, printed and mailed; fancy 


Relieving the Customer of Work 67 

announcements designed and printed; folders and cir¬ 
culars written, illustrated and printed; newspaper 
advertisements written, set in type and electrotypes 
made; form letters written and printed, and numer¬ 
ous envelope orders secured for inclosing the advertis¬ 
ing. 

Stress should be laid on the fact that the customer 
is relieved of much of the detail work incident to plac¬ 
ing orders with several firms, and also on the ad¬ 
vantages of the service in reading proofs, guarding 
against errors, etc. It can be explained that the cus¬ 
tomer need not read the proofs because the service 
takes the responsibility for this work. Buyers of print¬ 
ing know that printers are presumed to have proof¬ 
readers, but the assurance of a little extra attention 
is usually appreciated. 

There are firms that have developed the advertis¬ 
ing-service department into the most important part 
of their business. Most of the printing orders come 
through this department, and good prices are secured 
because there is not so much competition as in straight 
printing. The public seems to realize that there is a 
real advantage and benefit in the plan. 

Direct-advertising methods may be applied to se¬ 
curing orders for the advertising department, and 
form letters and folders or booklets may be used to 
familiarize the prospect with all the angles of the 
service offered. Such advertising should be consis- 


68 


A Letter to Business Men 


tently followed up at frequent intervals, for the prop¬ 
osition is big enough to merit patience and the ex¬ 
penditure of gray matter. 

I believe that new firms, or those in which there has 
been a change of personnel or of location, are usually 
easier to interest in a new proposition than older or 
well-established houses. The following letter is one 
that has been successfully used to attract the atten¬ 
tion of business men of this class. Replies received to 
such a letter may be developed into business for the 
advertising-service department if followed up with a 
personal call by a forceful representative with some 
knowledge of advertising. 

Profitable Advertising for Your Business 

Every business must have advertising of some kind, and it 
is particularly necessary for a new company or when there is 
a change of firm. 

Whatever your advertising plans may be, I can help you in 
carrying them out, whether the work is a prospectus or booklet, 
a series of business letters, newspaper advertisements, draw¬ 
ings or cuts, circulars, folders, or merely a piece of printing 
incorporating some clever, catchy idea to let the public know 
you are in business. 

Let me show you what 1 can do. 

I will study the goods or service you have to sell from the 
standpoint of the people you want to reach, and will then write 
you one advertisement putting into it all the convincing, sell¬ 
ing power I am able This advertisement must satisfy you or 
there will be no charge. And it will. I don’t know your business 
better than you do yourself, but if I can’t show you something 
helpful about the advertising of your business, the loss is mine, 
and I’ll take all the chances. 


69 


Asking an Investigation 

I work with my patrons as well as for them, and I have been 
successful because this plan of combining your intimate knowl¬ 
edge of your own business with my advertising experience can 
hardly fail to produce good advertising. 

Phone me today—Main 5046—and I will call . 

Investigate this proposition. It is as fair as I can make it. 
My rates are reasonable, and you will find that you need not 
spend much money to have attractive, pulling advertising. 
Select any kind of advertising that seems best and I will help 
you get the best possible results from the amount expended. 

In the common interest of your business, and mine, 'phone me 
today . Your Advertising Advisor. 


Chapter Nine 


Is a House-Organ Good Advertising? 

T HE booklet, magazine-like in form, called the 
house-organ is one of the comparatively new 
developments in advertising. It has been used in 
advertising almost every line of merchandise from 
fashion patterns to printing, and its use varies from 
the publication that is distributed only among em¬ 
ployees or agents of the business concern that issues 
it, to the house-organ that is mailed to the general 
public. 

House-organ advertising is a rather important form 
of publicity in the printing trade. Many plants use 
this kind of advertising, in large cities and small 
towns. Some printers who have established house- 
organs have discontinued them because they did not 
pay. Others have changed the form of their publica¬ 
tions several times. And their contents vary from a 
booklet that resembles rather closely a small monthly 
magazine to others that look more like advertising 
folders or booklets. The house-organ has been con¬ 
demned and praised by those who have used it. New 
house-organs are continually making their bids for 
patronage, taking the places of those that are discon¬ 
tinued. The entire question of the value of this sort of 
advertising, as compared with results from the same 


The Value of a House-Organ 71 

expenditure of money and effort in some other way, 
seems to be an unsettled problem. 

The reason for the great diversity of opinion re¬ 
garding the value of a house-organ as an important 
part of the advertising of a printing business prob¬ 
ably lies in the fact that it is a form of publicity that 
is still in its infancy. If there are great principles or 
rules which govern the house-organ and upon which 
depends its success or failure, these basic principles 
are not generally understood by the trade. The master 
printers or editors who are responsible for the house- 
organs seem to produce publications without as much 
regard for the opinions of the readers as they should 
give. Too often a house-organ is a source of personal 
pride to its editor, but does not give sufficient tangible 
returns in the shape of profitable orders. 

The editorial policy of that eminently successful 
man in his field, S. S. McClure, would seem to be a 
much better one to follow. Mr. McClure is credited 
with saying that his one viewpoint in his editorial ca¬ 
pacity has ever been to produce a magazine containing 
the kind of matter that he thought his readers would 
most appreciate and enjoy. It requires a man of un¬ 
usual ability to edit a magazine from the standpoint 
of pleasing himself and then have it please his readers 
equally well. This has been done in some instances, but 
the plan is not the safe one to follow in house-organ 
work. 


72 Must Be Fresh and Attractive 

Direct advertising is a proved success, and the 
house-organ would seem to be one of the highest types 
of this printed advertising. To realize the success 
which seems possible, it is necessary, therefore, to sep¬ 
arate the good from the bad and thus get a definite 
idea of the things which are essential to make a house- 
organ profitable advertising, eliminating the objec¬ 
tionable features that detract from rather than add to 
the result aimed for. 

First of all, a house-organ, to be good advertising, 
must be so fresh and attractive and interesting that 
it will not reach the wastebasket until every one in the 
office or house, to whom it is directed, has read it. It 
should be more comprehensive than the ordinary folder 
or booklet, and the advertising copy it contains should 
be of such nature that the reader who buys printing 
will read it because of the information or suggestions 
offered. The style of this copy should be as far removed 
as possible from the old printers’ advertising, which 
used to read, “Cylinder Press & Co., Printers and 
Binders. Estimates cheerfully furnished.” The house- 
organ advertisement must tell an interesting story 
about the plant or about a certain kind of work. It 
should carry information not usually found in print¬ 
ers’ advertising, and should be designed to show that 
the firm issuing the house-organ knows something 
about the use of printing as well as its production. 
Such subjects as “Advertising campaigns,” “Turning 


73 


Will Not Run Itself 

color into sales,” “The right paper for your catalog,” 
“How the printed folder sells goods,” and many others 
along similar lines, can be discussed in a way that will 
make the advertising manager of a business house glad 
to read them. 

Excellent results have been secured in the printing 
trade, as well as in others, by publishing in the house- 
organ information similar to that in the technical 
trade publications. You know that advertising men 
and the managers of big business enterprises like to 
read such publications as The American Printer 
and other trade papers because the articles often are 
pertinent to their own advertising. Such descriptive 
articles about printing, advertising and selling, in a 
house-organ, have a semi-news value and tend to link 
up the parts of the organ, which are frank advertise¬ 
ments of the work or departments of the plant. 

There is one thing that has been thoroughly proved 
in connection with house-organ publishing, and that is 
that the publication will not run itself, nor can it suc¬ 
ceed if it is merely the by-product of the manager or 
some other person who edits the house-organ in his 
spare moments as a sort of adjunct to his other work. 
The entire responsibility for the success of the organ 
should be in the hands of one competent man. He should 
certainly have the cooperation and help of the man¬ 
ager and of every employee who can contribute to the 
value of the publication, but there must be a well-de- 


74 What Is a House-Organ? 

fined policy, based on experience or observation, and 
this policy should be carried out by the editor or one 
in charge giving unstinted time and consideration to 
the subject and to the consistent expenditure of the 
money required. The house-organ that bears all the 
marks of stinginess in its production cannot hope to 
succeed, and when it fails another printer will say, 
“House-organ advertising is no good; I have tried it.” 

I was recently interested in two instances of house- 
organ changes that came under my observation. An 
eastern house wrote me: “We have discontinued our 
general house-organ and we are now circulating a 
small monthly. You might call it a house-organ, but it 
has no editorial matter, and nothing but cuts, descrip¬ 
tions and prices.” The other firm was a western one 
that had published a house-organ for several years and 
had gotten results. This house discontinued the house- 
organ but at once sent out another booklet, under a 
different name, which was projected to be published 
monthly and to have even a larger complimentary cir¬ 
culation than had the old house-organ. 

The peculiar thing about both these cases to me was 
that both firms were under the impression that they 
were discontinuing their house-organs, while to me it 
seemed that both had just begun to find out what kind 
of organ was best suited to their use. 

The experience of publishing a house-organ without 
first investigating the subject thoroughly is an expen- 


75 


A House-Organ That Failed 

sive one. Much the better plan is for the printer to get 
in touch with other printers who are using house- 
organs, to get copies of as many of these publications 
as he can, and then to study the subject in the light of 
the experience of others, so that he may profit by their 
mistakes and benefit from those plans or policies that 
have been proved successful. 

I know of a house-organ that failed chiefly because 
the same cover design, in the same colors, was used 
month after month. Persons receiving it thought that 
it was merely another copy of the same advertising 
booklet they had seen before, and they passed it on to 
the wastebasket after the slightest glance. Admitting 
that the cover should have some sort of decorated de¬ 
sign, and is most pleasing when printed in two or more 
colors, it still remains to have the cover make just the 
sort of impression that is desired. It must whet the 
mental appetite of the observer so that he will look 
inside at once or keep the booklet for future reading. 
My own idea of the ideal house-organ cover is one that, 
while it retains the name of the publication, and per¬ 
haps the firm issuing it, in similar form in each issue, 
attracts attention because of the novelty or striking 
appearance of the design. Different colors of ink also 
help to give a fresh and original appearance. Then if 
the house-organ is good enough to fulfill its purpose 
the first time, the second and subsequent issues will be 
read with an avidity resulting from a recollection of 


76 A Sample of the Printer's Work 

the pleasure or information gained from perusing the 
previous copies. 

The house-organ seems a particularly suitable me¬ 
dium for advertising the service department of a print¬ 
ing business that renders assistance to business houses 
in the preparation of their printed advertising, and 
for covering, besides the actual printing orders, such 
things as supplying the drawings and other illustra¬ 
tions, the halftones and electrotypes, writing the copy, 
compiling or arranging the matter, suggesting the 
color scheme and the kinds of papers suited to the job, 
inclosing the printed matter in the envelopes, ad¬ 
dressing it and doing the mailing. All these things and 
many others can often be handled by a printer who 
makes it known that he will help his customers to get 
satisfactory results from their printed advertising by 
doing more than is ordinarily expected of a printer. 
There are house-organs in which the advertising-serv¬ 
ice department occupies most of the space, and results 
seem to justify this policy. 

A printer should always remember that his house- 
organ is not only an advertisement of his business, but 
is also a sample of his work. His ability to produce a 
pleasing and harmonious piece of printed advertising 
by a combination of paper, ink and type should be 
shown in every issue of the house-organ, for by this 
is he judged. 

I am a firm believer in the selling value of illustra- 


77 


The Mailing List 

tions, and I believe that the house-organ should be well 
illustrated, not with stock cuts, unless they are good, 
but with drawings or with photographic reproductions 
made especially for this use. Pictures add to the value 
of any printed advertising, and in this case the ability 
of the firm represented to handle halftone printing and 
other cut work can be shown and proved. 

Many of the house-organs contain pages of humor¬ 
ous matter, short stories and jokes, and while these do 
perhaps add to the interest in the publication, they 
are, I believe, secondary in importance to articles 
which may be of practical usefulness to the reader in 
his own business. 

The mailing list of a house-organ should be given 
careful attention or the best will fail in accomplishing 
what is desired. In the first place, the list must be well 
selected, and then kept up to its original standing by 
a continual checking up to remove names of persons 
who show no interest after a reasonable period of time 
—six months or more; and new names should be added 
to replace those removed. It is worth considerable at¬ 
tention, and the time spent in keeping the list fresh 
will be well employed. 

The opinions of readers should be frequently asked 
on points connected with the policy of the house-organ, 
and the “Personal Talks with the Editor,” which are 
common in several of the regular monthlies, might well 
be adapted to the house-organ, devoting a page or 


78 


The Copy That Goes In 

half-page of each issue to this purpose. While editing 
a house-organ of large circulation, I frequently re¬ 
ceived excellent suggestions in the contributions to its 
columns from the readers. Some of these came unsolic¬ 
ited, and others were the result of frequent invitations 
to them to express their likes and dislikes. 

The copy that goes into the house-organ is of prime 
importance. It is worth paying well for, and should be 
passed upon by the editor just as the editors of the 
great monthlies and weeklies pass upon the manu¬ 
scripts submitted to them. The house-organ should 
not appear to be entirely the work of one writer, even 
though most or all of the copy is written by the same 
person. He can diversify his style to give variety, or 
articles by others may be borrowed or purchased for 
use in the organ. 

It is not necessary to suggest any particular size 
for the publication. This is best left to the individual 
publishers. The size of the page is immaterial, but the 
booklet should not be so small as to defeat the idea of 
its being a regular publication, and should not be so 
large as to make the cost out of proportion to the re¬ 
sults. A little observation and experience will show 
what size is best. 

Properly handled, I believe that the house-organ 
fills a very important part in the advertising of the 
printer. 


Chapter Ten 


Selling Printing by Mail 

T HAT printing can be successfully sold by mail 
is proved by the experience of successful firms 
who use the mails, either wholly or in part, in 
securing orders. No printer need doubt the efficacy of 
printed advertising as a means of promoting his own 
business, and there is no phase of the work which can¬ 
not be handled by means of correspondence and printed 
matter, with the help of dummies and samples to con¬ 
vey illustrations of ideas from the printer to the pros¬ 
pective customer. 

There are perhaps few printers in the general line 
who conduct an exclusive mail-order business, but there 
are many whose mail orders form a very important 
part of the year’s business, and several specialty 
printers depend almost entirely for their output upon 
orders received by mail from persons whom they may 
never see. 

In a business in which close attention to detail is 
always important, accuracy and a comprehensive con¬ 
sideration for every detail become absolutely essential 
in handling mail orders, and for this reason personal 
experience, or a study of the experiences of others, is 
of great help in successfully carrying on a mail-order 
department or business. Misunderstandings must be 


80 


Quoting the Price 

avoided if possible, clear business letters must be writ¬ 
ten, and the views of the buyer must be obtained as 
plainly as possible. Proofs that require but little ex¬ 
planation should be submitted, and extra attention 
must be given to the details of packing and shipping 
so that the goods will arrive on time and in good condi¬ 
tion. 

Taking up some of the difficulties of handling the 
orders of the unseen buyer somewhat in the order they 
are most likely to occur, the first indication of a pros¬ 
pective mail order is usually a brief inquiry for prices 
on a job. The applicant may give only half the in¬ 
formation the printer would like to have; there are a 
hundred questions he would like to ask his correspon¬ 
dent about the j ob and a hundred more details he would 
like to know. Lacking this information, he must answer 
the letter promptly and in a way that will at least 
bring another letter. If the inquiry is so lacking in 
information that a quotation is impossible, the reply 
should state that an estimate will be made promptly 
upon the receipt of the required information. In most 
cases, however, it is better to plunge at once into the 
business of securing the order. A price on the job indi¬ 
cated may be quoted, and this should be accompanied 
by a dummy, samples of paper or typography, a lay¬ 
out perhaps, and anything else that will tend to make 
the meaning clear. The quotation should be specific, a 
bid on the kind of job the printer has in mind, and suffi- 


81 


A Spirit of Confidence 

ciently clear to the prospect to make him either accept 
the price and specifications or state definitely in his 
reply wherein the specifications do not suit him. The 
printer must be exact and put the matter up to the 
customer in a way that will make him reply in a definite 
manner. 

The spirit of this early correspondence should be 
confidence; it should infer that the printer has been 
selected to do the j ob, and that the inquiry is made in 
good faith with the intention of placing the order. No 
mention should be made of competition on the work, 
but the effort should be made to make the reader see 
that this particular printer is undoubtedly the one 
who should do this work. 

A service that every buyer of printing must appre¬ 
ciate is the furnishing of a dummy and layout of a job, 
and the care used in making such a representation of 
the finished job has often secured an order that would 
otherwise have gone to a competitor. This is particu¬ 
larly true in handling mail orders and inquiries. 

The effort and expense of making dummies are some¬ 
times considered as out of proportion to their value, 
but the salesman who can show a prospective customer 
just how his job will look has a tremendous advantage 
over the solicitor who depends entirely upon exciting 
the patron’s imagination by either spoken or written 
word. 

The best kind of dummy is the one that most nearly 


82 


Preparing a Dummy 

approaches the finished job. It should not misrepresent 
the kind of printing that will be done on the job, and it 
need not do so to be effective. There are many ways to 
make a dummy and layout attractive. If the job is 
a booklet, for instance, the following plan might be 
adopted: 

Select the paper for cover and contents that seems 
most suitable or most likely to impress the prospect 
favorably. Fold and bind one book with the correct 
number of blank pages and then proceed to make the 
cover, title-page and a few other pages approximate, 
in appearance, your idea of the finished job. This may 
be done by setting the cover-page and perhaps other 
pages in the style of type to be used, or it may be 
accomplished by cutting printed illustrations, orna¬ 
ments, borders and lines of type from other booklets 
and pasting them in their proper places. A little draw¬ 
ing with a pen or brush in the proper colors may be 
done if it is to be finished neatly. If clippings from 
other booklets are used, this use should be explained 
and the prospect made to understand that it is the 
general effect that is shown him, and that the illustra¬ 
tions may be foreign to the subjects of his own, but 
similar in colors or style or the nature of the cuts. You 
may go a step further and inclose the dummy in a suit¬ 
able envelope. The salesman who goes to a prospect 
fully prepared with a neat and attractive dummy and 
layout and an intelligent quotation, with a price not 


83 


Acknowledging the Order 

far from competing bids, will receive more considera¬ 
tion than the solicitor who submits no dummy, and 
the implied service, shown by the dummy, will often 
secure an order, even at a higher price. In soliciting 
orders by mail, the letter is the salesman, and the 
dummy is even more important. 

The work of the printer in securing business by mail 
should not be limited to a single letter quoting prices. 
Even though no reply is received to the quotation, the 
prospect should be written to and asked if the order 
has been placed, or if there is anything in connection 
with the job that was not sufficiently clear in the previ¬ 
ous correspondence. Such a letter will usually bring a 
reply. Then, if the order has been placed elsewhere, the 
printer may acknowledge this letter, regretting the 
circumstances which prevented him from doing the 
work and asking for consideration on the next printing 
order. 

When a mail order is received, it should be acknowl¬ 
edged promptly, stating about when proofs will be 
mailed or the work shipped. This is essential, even 
though the customer does not ask for delivery on a 
specified date, because it makes him feel better satisfied 
from the start, and it may save a complaint a few days 
or weeks later because the job has not been delivered. 
If there is any detail of the order not perfectly clear, 
the acknowledgment letter should call special atten¬ 
tion to this discrepancy and state the matter as the 


84 


Sending the Invoice 

printer intends to handle it. Then the customer will, 
of necessity, correct the misunderstanding if there be 
one. It puts the onus on him and absolves the printer 
from claims for errors. 

When the proof is sent out, it should be accom¬ 
panied by a letter, explaining any point not absolutely 
clear in the proof itself. The buyer should be asked to 
read and return the proof promptly, and a calendar 
memorandum should be kept of the date the proof is 
expected back. If it is not received by that date, an¬ 
other letter should be written asking why the proof has 
not been returned. 

When the job is done, it should be wrapped in pack¬ 
ages of convenient size and packed securely for ship¬ 
ping. On the day the job is shipped an invoice should 
be mailed, usually accompanied by a sample of the 
work, particularly if the goods are sent by freight. 

The same rules for extending credit on printing to 
local buyers should prevail in handling mail orders. If 
the buyer is not well rated by the commercial credit 
agencies, references or a cash deposit should be asked 
for before the work is begun and as soon as the order 
is received. And on a first order, the printer’s terms of 
payment should be plainly stated so that there may be 
no misunderstanding as to when the work is to be paid 
for or the balance of the payment made. 

With these suggestions on the handling of mail or¬ 
ders, there remains perhaps the most important phase 


Obtaining New Customers 85 

of the question—how to get inquiries and new custom¬ 
ers, and how to retain the business of patrons after 
the first order has been secured. Inquiries may be got¬ 
ten in several ways—by advertising in newspapers, 
trade journals or magazines, by a direct-mailing cam¬ 
paign to prospective buyers in the form of house- 
organs, form letters and other printed matter, or by 
a combination of traveling salesmen and direct mail¬ 
ing. 

The method most popular with the ordinary printer 
is the direct-advertising route, and this can be made 
successful if conducted in the right way. A definite 
plan is the first requisite. It should early be decided 
just what sort of printing will be solicited by mail, and 
the kind of printing decided on should certainly be 
work that can be handled to advantage without send¬ 
ing much or any of it out to another shop to be done. 
Then a mailing list of prospective buyers of this par¬ 
ticular kind of printing should be compiled. This can 
be done from city or state directories, from a careful 
reading of trade journals and newspapers in the ter¬ 
ritory covered, and often with the help of friends or 
business acquaintances who may be familiar with the 
territory. There should be a really good reason for 
putting a name on the list, and this reason should be, 
“This man or firm uses the kind of printing I am doing 
and is therefore a prospective customer.” A mailing 
list need not be large at the start, but it should be 
accurate. 


.86 Direct Advertising Suggested 

The next step is to plan a campaign of advertising 
covering several months or a year. The prospect 
should be bombarded at regular intervals with printed 
matter, form letters, folders, samples of work, etc., to 
arouse his attention and his interest. The house-organ 
should be sent to him as often as published, and in the 
letters and other matter sent the idea should be fore¬ 
most in mind that something new must be presented 
each time. New arguments, new samples, new reasons 
why it is to the prospect’s interest to place a trial 
order, should be used. The same old matter will not 
answer the purpose, for it may be that the prospect is 
reading the advertising sent, but has not been con¬ 
vinced of the merits of the work or service offered. 

Since much of the printing that will be solicited 
comes under the head of printed advertising, the bene¬ 
fits of direct advertising should be suggested and im¬ 
pressed upon the reader and the experience or facilities 
of the printer for handling this particular kind of 
work made attractive and plain. The advertising of 
several of the paper houses along this line can be 
drawn on, for their arguments are good and the matter 
usually well written. Cut prices need not be referred 
to, but quality, accuracy and attention to details are 
considerations that appeal to nearly every buyer of 
printing. The matter of freight and express rates 
should be made clear. If the printer expects the buyer 
to pay the delivery charges, the rates should be given, 


87 


Paying the Freight 

if possible, and some pertinent reference made to the 
ratio which these rates bear to the prices of the print¬ 
ing, if such a reference is not unfavorable. If the 
printer intends to prepay the delivery charges, a cus¬ 
tom which is practical chiefly on small work, this fact 
should be featured in every piece of advertising sent 
out. We all remember the advertising slogan, “Jones 
pays the freight,” and the value of such a statement 
has not outlived its usefulness, as I can testify from 
personal experience in carrying on a mail-order print¬ 
ing business. Having a plant a hundred miles from two 
large cities, I built up a successful business with large 
manufacturers and jobbers in these cities by a combi¬ 
nation of the direct-advertising methods outlined with 
personal solicitation in a weekly trip, calling on cus¬ 
tomers and prospective ones. The freight rate was 
twenty-five cents per hundred pounds, and when you 
consider the average value of one hundred pounds of 
printed matter, it is clear that prepaying the freight 
was not a very important item in the cost of the work. 

When numerous customers have been secured by 
mail, personal letters can take the place of the form 
letters, and the business, which will probably be only 
a small part of the printing purchases at first, can be 
increased by giving satisfactory work and service at 
satisfactory prices. If a certain job is found to be 
ordered at regular intervals, the attention of the cus¬ 
tomer can be called to the job just before it is usually 


88 Increasing Purchases 

ordered to prevent the order going to some one else 
through error or carelessness. Any suggestions that 
may make the customer’s printing more effective or 
the service more satisfactory can be presented with 
expectations of a hearing, and when a part of the 
printing orders has been secured from a new customer, 
it is not difficult to increase the purchases. 

In some respects mail orders for printing are more 
desirable than local ones, and every printer should 
have a mail-order department even if it is limited to 
the work of one man part of each week. The time spent 
can be made profitable, and soliciting printing by mail 
is often freer from competition than other lines of en¬ 
deavor. 


Chapter Eleven 


Difficulties That Bother the Estimator 

E STIMATING is so closely allied to the adver¬ 
tising and selling departments of the printing 
business that a monograph on estimating would 
hardly be complete without some reference to the com¬ 
puting of costs and making of prices on work. It is my 
object to consider here some of the problems that fre¬ 
quently make the estimator’s position unpleasant and 
to suggest some ways of meeting them with credit and 
profit to his firm. 

The man who sells the goods is about the most im¬ 
portant man about a printing plant, but the man who 
makes the estimate and prices is a close second, and 
when both branches of work are combined in one man, 
he has more responsibility than any other employee 
of the plant. The profits or losses of the business rest, 
first of all, in his hands, and if his figures are not 
accurate no amount of work in the factory can over¬ 
come the damage he may do the business. Conversely, 
the success of the business can be promoted most ef¬ 
fectively by the skilful work of a competent estimator. 

The estimator should do more than estimate the 
probable cost of orders, however. He should be an in¬ 
spector of the work that passes through the plant 
daily, inspecting the work of the various departments 



90 


Some Knotty Problems 

and keeping constant watch on the time required on 
different orders. He should always be alert to discover 
waste of time or material, and be quick to suggest im¬ 
proved methods that will economize hours or stock. 
Such a man becomes an efficiency engineer of the high¬ 
est type, and his value to a firm can only be estimated 
by considering the size of the plant or the volume of 
business which he is capable of overseeing in these 
ways. 

Taking up now some of the knotty problems that 
daily present themselves for solution to the estimator 
in the shop of medium or large size, I wish to suggest 
some methods by which an exact or accurate estimate 
may be arrived at on uncommon work or work done 
for the customer who is unreasonable or exacting. 

The job that is out of the ordinary run of work is 
always difficult to estimate. The estimator wants to 
make a safe figure, and he also wants to get the order; 
but he cannot recollect handling an exactly similar 
job before, or has no records to base his estimate on. 
The result may often be attained, however, by dissect¬ 
ing the job into its integral parts. In estimating a 
large sheet of tabular work, for instance, a good plan 
is to consider a small section of the form as the unit, 
estimating the probable time required for its composi¬ 
tion carefully. It is then easy to multiply this time by 
the number of units into which it is divided. 

Estimators are prone to figure too low on work that 


Color Work 


91 


requires careful register. The registering of plates or 
forms for two or more colors seems a very simple mat¬ 
ter in the aggregate, but I have seen cases where it 
was necessary to abandon the entire color scheme of a 
job because the forms could not be made to register 
without electrotyping the pages of the booklet. In 
estimating on color work, the “squeeze” of a form 
should always be considered, and in the case of a six¬ 
teen-page book form, this is enough to spoil the reg¬ 
ister of a border, running in one color, with an outline 
around this border, in another. Electrotypes will re¬ 
duce the amount of variation, but the additional cost 
of these plates is sometimes an important item in the 
cost of the j ob. 

In estimating a job requiring many halftone or 
other plates, furnished by the customer, the item of 
making these plates type-high, and perhaps doing 
other work to make them usable, must be allowed for 
in the estimate. The customary requirement that the 
customer provide good plates will not always be suffi¬ 
cient protection to the printer against faulty plates, 
and the safe way is to see the plates and to allow time 
for putting them in good condition. 

The little item of cutting stock is one that eats a 
big hole in the profits of a firm if not accounted for in 
the estimates. Before the advent of the cost system, 
little attention was paid to stock cutting, but modern 
methods show that more time is required to trim a ream 


92 


The Matter of Overtime 

of paper or to cut the stock for a job than was usually 
believed. The time of stock cutters should be recorded 
accurately and estimates based on the records. 

The matter of overtime is something that means a 
loss to the plant unless the estimator adds the extra 
cost to quoted prices; and where a job must be done 
either wholly or partly at night or on Sundays, the best 
plan seems to be to have a complete understanding with 
the customer as to the price of the work and the fact 
that it must be done outside of the regular working 
hours. I know a large and successful plant with a high 
reputation for keeping its promises of delivery which 
has a rule that a job must be done on time, regardless 
of the amount of overtime required. But, as a compet¬ 
itor of this firm remarked to me, “They charge enough 
for their work so they can do it all in overtime if neces¬ 
sary.” There are few shops, however, able to get over¬ 
time prices for regular day work, so that the policy 
of this plant is hardly a safe or practical one to follow 
for the ordinary master printer. 

That trait of human nature which makes one man 
take twice as long to do a certain job as another man, 
under the same outward conditions, is always a stum¬ 
bling block in the way of estimating. There are two 
ways in which this obstacle may be met. One is by get¬ 
ting the average time or speed of all the jnen doing the 
same kind of work and using the average in estimating; 
the other is to use the probable time of an individual 


Consulting with Shop Employees 93 

worker and then make sure that the particular job is 
given to this man to do. The first suggestion is un¬ 
doubtedly best, but the second is practical on certain 
occasions, as in the face of extra strong competition, 
where an especially accurate cost estimate is desired. 

An estimator should accustom himself to relying on 
his own judgment, but the help or suggestions of fore¬ 
men and other employees should not be despised. There 
is a peculiar thing in connection with consulting with 
shop employees as to the probable time required to do 
a certain job, and I have often wondered if my own 
experience coincides with that of other estimators. I 
have found that a foreman or compositor or pressman 
will usually underestimate the time required on a job, 
when his opinion is asked, particularly if he gets the 
idea that a very close estimate is being made. 

One of the best protections against errors in esti¬ 
mating is a cost or price book, kept up by the estima¬ 
tor for his own guidance. Every page of such a book 
should be compiled by himself, and, by arranging vari¬ 
ous kinds of work under headings, alphabetically in¬ 
dexed, the contents will be easy to refer to. Such a book 
should contain all sorts of classified information. A 
copy of the cost record of an unusual job; the amount 
of ink used on a long run; the bindery time for an odd 
job of stitching or folding; the actual speed of the 
various presses, taking the average of their production 
for a month; the time required for proofreading a 


94 


Using a Cost Book 

certain book; figures showing the cost of the composi¬ 
tion of some intricate job; the cost of slipsheeting; the 
freight on paper stock from the mills, and thousands 
of other items, should find their proper places in the 
cost book. Such a book should be added to almost daily, 
and this frequent work and more frequent referring to 
the book in making estimates will soon make its pages 
so familiar that the estimator will almost uncon¬ 
sciously memorize much of the information and will be 
able to turn to any item or table without hunting for it. 

I know of no better help to an estimator than the 
right kind of cost book. It is far more reliable and 
helpful than the published price books, of which there 
are a number on the market. These price books are 
valuable, but should be used as a guide for compari¬ 
sons, in quoting approximate prices or where there is 
not time to make a detailed estimate. The figures usu¬ 
ally given in these books are averages, and do not rep¬ 
resent the exact costs of any particular plant. I believe 
that every estimator should have one or more of these 
books and should use them as suggested, for checking 
up his own figures or for quoting prices quickly. 

Estimating the time of composition is usually rec¬ 
ognized as the hardest part of the estimator’s work. 
Personally, I have not found this true in my own ex¬ 
perience, but many men have more trouble in getting 
correct estimates of time in the composing-room than 
in any other department. There are many things that 


Consult Production Records 


95 


make it difficult to estimate composition, particularly 
handwork. The amount and kind of equipment, the 
way in which material is cared for and distributed, the 
make-up and other handling of the type after it is set, 
and many other things, enter into the composition cost, 
and it is these things, with others, that make it hard 
to estimate time in this department. Experience and a 
constant watchfulness over the cost sheets will do more 
than any other two things to make an estimator pro¬ 
ficient in correctly gaging the cost of composition. 

In the pressroom, the records of the various presses 
are also most valuable helps in arriving at the cost of 
odd runs, and the conscientious estimator need have 
no feeling that it is a confession of weakness frequently 
to consult the production records of the past in mak¬ 
ing his predictions for the future. Accuracy is the one 
essential thing in estimating the cost of printing. It 
takes precedence over every other consideration. To be 
accurate is more important than to be rapid, and 
speedy conclusions are too apt to be erroneous. 

In my own experience in estimating printing, I have 
found that the checking over of the items of an esti¬ 
mate is one of the surest ways to avoid errors of omis¬ 
sion and mistakes of any kind. Every figure and exten¬ 
sion and total should be verified, and the items should 
be checked to see if any part of the work involved in 
the delivery of the job has been overlooked. After this 
has been done, the estimator can well take a compre- 


96 


The Kind of Job 


hensive view of his work, looking at the resulting cost 
and price from the standpoint of the customer and in 
the light of the probable competition on the job. Such 
a view of an estimate is something like the habit of the 
artist, who, after working closely on a drawing for 
some time, will step back to view the effect in a general 
way without so much attention to details. The price 
per thousand should be considered as well as the total 
amount; the purpose or use of the printing may also 
be considered to see if the quoted price will be within 
the reasonable limits beyond which the customer will 
presumably not go to accomplish the result desired. 
The kind of job wanted is also important, and in this 
case I mean the character of the work wanted, which 
can be designated by the terms “fancy job,” “cheap 
job,” “fair job,” “quick job,” “perfect work,” etc. 
Every printer knows what these terms mean, and it is 
usually not hard to get an expression from a prospec¬ 
tive customer as to the kind of work he expects. The 
estimate should conform to the patron’s expectations. 

The hard-to-please customer; the buyer who thinks 
he knows more about printing than any printer; the 
exacting, picayunish purchaser who thinks more of 
unimportant details than of the general result, and the 
careless buyer, may all be classified as offering condi¬ 
tions that the estimator must meet and overcome, or 
be overcome by, almost daily. And it should add to the 
zest and interest of the work that human nature is not 


Hard-to-Please Customer 


97 


always the same, and that each prospective buyer for 
whom an estimate is made differs in one or perhaps 
many particulars from every other. The estimator has 
a dual duty to perform in most cases. He must cover 
the cost of unnecessary changes of the faultfinder and 
at the same time preserve dignity and his temper if he 
comes in personal contact with such a customer. He 
must in some way supply the deficient details of in¬ 
formation he needs to make an estimate for the careless 
buyer so definite that there shall be no further chance 
for misunderstandings. And he must be broad-minded 
enough to overlook the annoying petulances of the man 
who sees things through the small end of the glass. 

The duties of an estimator should not end with ar¬ 
riving at the probable cost of a job or with quoting the 
price. If the order is secured, he should make it his 
interest to see that the job is run through the factory 
in the way that he estimated it would be done, provided 
he cannot make himself still more valuable to his firm 
by devising some way in which the cost can be cut with¬ 
out interfering with the quality of the product or the 
promised time of delivery. Heads of departments 
should frequently be consulted as to the best methods 
of handling the job at the particular time it will be 
done. And this suggests that it is often expedient to 
run a job through the plant in a different way than 
was intended. For instance, a small form may be esti¬ 
mated to be run on a platen press at the shop cost of 


98 


In the Plant 


this kind of work. When the order comes in every 
platen press may be operating on long runs, perhaps 
very profitable ones. But the pony cylinder or a larger 
cylinder has no form ready, although the pressman is 
putting in full time on the pay roll. Under such condi¬ 
tions, it would be good judgment to run the small form 
on the cylinder press, and while the cost of presswork 
would exceed the estimate, the actual profit on the job, 
considered in connection with the other work in the 
shop at the same time, would not be affected. By this 
I mean that, while the cost record on the job might 
show a decreased profit (perhaps a loss), this appar¬ 
ent loss of profits would never appear in any other way 
and the bank balance would not be injuriously affected 
by the arrangement. 

There is so much of the inside workings of the plant 
that come under the eye of an estimator with enter¬ 
prise that he can easily make himself the most valuable 
man in the office, one whose opinion is frequently con¬ 
sulted and highly regarded, and whose salary must, in 
time, mount to satisfactory proportions. I see a great 
future for young men who will study estimating as it 
should be studied, and who will aim at the highest 
branches of a service in which only the fit can survive. 


Chapter Twelve 


Credits, Allowances, Adjusting Claims 

T HE questions of extending credit, making allow¬ 
ances and adjusting claims are closely associ¬ 
ated with the problems of selling, and they are 
all hard ones for most printers. Technically speaking, 
they come under the general head of business manage¬ 
ment, and as such are common to every line of trade; 
but in the printing industry, with very small margins 
and the extra hazards of manufacturing a product to 
order for each customer, they seem particularly diffi¬ 
cult of solution. To ignore these difficulties, in place of 
meeting them, is almost fatal to success; and many 
failures in the printing trade may be traced back to a 
poor method of handling them. 

Taking them up in the order in which they naturally 
arise, the first is the problem of extending credit to 
customers. The credit department of many plants is 
more noticeable by reason of its absence than for the 
good that it accomplishes. Only a few of the larger 
plants of the country can boast of a credit man whose 
sole business it is to pass on the credit of every patron. 
In the others the little work that is done under this 
head is made a part of the duties of the bookkeeper, 
manager, or perhaps a salesman. It is therefore not 
strange that hundreds of thousands of dollars in prof- 


100 


Cash or Charge 

its are lost to the trade every year through failure to 
collect for the work done. Every printer has a long 
string of poor or doubtful accounts on his books, which 
he may carry forward as assets, but which in reality 
are not worth five cents on the dollar. They are the 
result of extending credit to persons who are not en¬ 
titled to it. 

It is quite a common thing for a stranger who has 
never before been a patron to order printing to the 
extent of twenty-five or fifty dollars, giving the most 
careful directions as to how he wishes the work done, 
and then to leave the office without mentioning how or 
when he expects to pay for it; and it is almost as cus¬ 
tomary for the printer or salesman to let him do this, 
trusting more to good luck than to anything else that 
the job will be paid for when finished. Business in other 
lines is not conducted in this way. The first thing the 
clerk in the department store asks, when taking an 
order, is, “Cash or charge?” If the customer replies 
“Charge,” there is some delay until the credit can be 
passed on at the office. Grocers who do a credit busi¬ 
ness are commonly supposed to have heavy losses be¬ 
cause of non-payment of bills, but we must at least 
give the grocers credit for learning something about 
the person who asks for credit, and the losses, when 
they occur, can be laid to poor judgment in extending 
the credit, rather than to ignoring the matter of credit 
entirely, as is so common in the printing trade. Every 


101 


Asking a Deposit 

time a printer allows a stranger to order work without 
a definite understanding as to when and how it is to be 
paid for, he is taking desperate chances, and he is also 
injuring the entire trade by thus encouraging so slip¬ 
shod a method of buying. 

It is recognized as a custom of the trade that un¬ 
known persons must make a cash deposit when leaving 
an order for printing, the amount of this deposit vary¬ 
ing from a fourth to half the total amount. This cus¬ 
tom is not enforced, however, as it should be. The 
printer fears he will offend, or he is so busy that he 
does not take the time necessary, or he carelessly for¬ 
gets to mention the deposit. The regrets always come 
too late for any good except as a warning to act differ¬ 
ently the next time a stranger orders printing and 
omits to mention the payment. The terms of printing 
should be “Net cash.” Printing is a manufacturing 
business, and manufacturers are accustomed to make 
their own terms. The “two per cent, ten days” terms 
do not apply in buying all manufactured goods, al¬ 
though they are fairly common in retail merchandis¬ 
ing. If local conditions seem to necessitate giving this 
discount, the printer should not extend it to apply to 
two-per-cent discount for payment on the tenth of the 
month following for goods bought during the previous 
month, as this in many cases would in reality discount 
bills for goods purchased thirty or forty days pre¬ 
viously. 


102 


Bills Carefully Itemized 

To patrons who are entitled to credit, statements 
should be rendered promptly on the first of each month, 
covering the purchases of the previous month; the 
itemized statement has been found most suitable to the 
handling of accounts for printing. 

Bills should also be carefully itemized, and where 
there are extra charges for alterations, changes from 
copy, overtime, or for any other item, they should be 
plainly shown. I filled a position at one time with a 
large house, which position I styled that of “trouble 
man or fixer.” A part of my duties was to adjust the 
claims for allowances and discounts of customers who 
were holding up the payment of their accounts until 
these claims were adjusted. One of the frequent causes 
of trouble was the carelessness of the bookkeeper in 
itemizing the charges for extras on bills. Even though 
these charges might be carefully itemized on the charge 
sheet or job ticket, from which the billing was made, 
the quoted price and the charge for extras would be 
totaled and entered as one item on the bill by the clerk 
in charge of this work. This made it appear to the cus¬ 
tomer that the house was trying to charge him a higher 
price than quoted for his work without offering any 
explanation. Much of this trouble could have been 
avoided by a more careful billing of the accounts. 

While the printer should certainly be paid for any 
extra service rendered in connection with filling an 
order, such as changes from the original specifications, 


Don't Combat Customers 


103 


additional copy, overtime (under certain conditions), 
etc., it is just as true that there are frequent claims for 
allowances, on the part of the customer, that are just 
and should be met in a businesslike way. Diplomacy is 
the greatest help in settling claims for allowances, and 
the printer who must handle these claims should take 
as his example the men in the complaint departments of 
big corporations, such as gas and electric companies, 
telephone companies and other public-service corpo¬ 
rations, who deal with thousands of customers every 
month. I know a man in charge of such work for a gas 
and electric company whose daily work is to meet com¬ 
plaining customers and send them away satisfied and 
with a “good taste in their mouths.” While his fore¬ 
head is wrinkled and his nails bitten to the quick from 
the nervous tension of his work, his manner is always 
suave, and he wins his points by not appearing to com¬ 
bat the customer. 

The right way to meet the man who thinks he has 
strong grounds for a complaint over his printing or 
the price charged for it is to appear to agree with him 
from the start, and to assure him at once that if the 
house has been at fault in any particular the matter 
will be made right to his entire satisfaction. He should 
be made to feel that his patronage is highly regarded, 
and that he is not even suspected of making a claim 
that is not just. The man with a “kick” expects to have 
to fight for what he considers his rights, and if he meets 


104 Adjusting Complaints 

no opposition to his demands or bluster he soon loses 
much of his indignation or combativeness and can be 
dealt with on a reasonable basis. 

The customer who has just grounds for complaint, 
either regarding the price of the job, the quality of the 
work, or the time of delivery, should receive prompt 
and equitable consideration. It makes little difference 
to him how much the house may have made or lost on 
his work, and he usually knows but little of the details 
entering into the production of his printing. His side 
of the question is based on the price quoted him and on 
the statements that may have been made to him as to 
the kind of job that would be delivered and the time 
when he would get it. If the printer has failed to live 
up to any of these particulars, as he sees them, he be¬ 
lieves he has been mistreated, and he wants satisfac¬ 
tion. It is usually a mistake to try to explain that, for 
some unforeseen reason, the job cost more than was 
expected and was produced at a loss instead of a profit. 
The better way is to explain only what the charges for 
extras really are, in a way that the layman will under¬ 
stand ; and, in the case of claims for an allowance, to 
adjust the matter by arbitration. If the printer shows 
an immediate disposition to meet the customer halfway 
in his demands, the claim can often be reduced to fifty 
per cent of the original demand. 

Claims for shortage should be looked into closely be¬ 
cause there are so many chances for the patron to 


Delayed Deliveries 105 

claim a shortage when none exists excepting in his 
imagination. Records of the various departments and 
the delivery department should be accurate enough to 
satisfy most persons of the quantity of any job de¬ 
livered, and the assistance of the customer should be 
asked in locating the shortage, if any exists. He should 
be impressed with the fact that no responsible printing 
house intentionally gives a short count, and it is best 
to assure the complainant, from the start, that if there 
has been a short delivery it will be made good, at no 
expense to him. An exception might be noted here, re¬ 
ferring to the custom of some plants that print on their 
quotation blanks and letterheads the notice that a 
variation of five to ten per cent more or less of any job 
shall be considered as good delivery. But even with this 
precaution, it is necessary to handle claims for short¬ 
age in a way that impresses the buyer as being liberal. 

Delayed deliveries are so common in the printing 
trade that the handling of complaints on this account 
is a serious problem in many plants. The first step to¬ 
ward a solution of this difficulty is to reduce the delays 
to the minimum. This may be done by keeping a closer 
check on work in the shop. A date book, in which every 
promise of delivery is entered when the job is taken, 
will help. The work in each department can be checked 
up with these promises every morning and many de¬ 
lays prevented in this way. When a job cannot be com¬ 
pleted as promised, the best way to handle the “kick” 


106 


Customers Are Assets 


which is usually forthcoming is to forestall the cus¬ 
tomer by explaining to him that his work cannot be de¬ 
livered exactly when promised for reasons that should 
be made as clear to him as possible. A new promise 
should then be made and lived up to. He can thus be 
made to feel that his work is not forgotten or held up 
to give precedence to some other customer. 

Claims are sometimes made for a forfeiture on ac¬ 
count of delay in delivery. The customer claims that he 
or his business has been damaged because the work was 
not delivered when promised, and he wants cash dam¬ 
ages. Such claims require the most careful adjustment. 
If there has been a written agreement to deliver the 
work on a certain date and the customer has not con¬ 
tributed to the delay, his claim should be allowed, in 
full and without question. Such cases are rare, how¬ 
ever, and where there is no agreement in writing to pay 
a forfeit in case of delay, the claim is a matter of 
equity, and should be settled by presenting the print¬ 
er’s side honestly but firmly, and then offering to com¬ 
promise if the customer still claims that he must be 
paid for the delay and if his claim seems a just one. 

The customers of a plant are among its most valu¬ 
able assets, and should be held even if unjust allow¬ 
ances must sometimes be made. The printer should 
value his own self-respect at least as highly as he does 
the regard and respect of his customers; but it does 
not pay to appear too arbitrary, and the successful 


107 


Overlook Petty Annoyances 

printer must often swallow his pride, submit to dis¬ 
tasteful allusions, and even at times make credit allow¬ 
ances that he knows are not just, in order to hold the 
business of an otherwise desirable customer. Every 
business man is to this extent a slave to his patrons, 
and the most successful printers are those who are 
most ready to adjust any grievances of customers and 
so hold their trade in the face of competition. 

Up to a certain limit the printer can afford to let his 
customers say almost anything to him. Human nature 
is prone to juggle with truth and justice when dealing 
with the printer, and these shortcomings are sometimes 
overlooked in the interest of profits. People do not like 
to be told that their claims are false, even if they know 
it themselves; and usually nothing can be gained by 
antagonizing a customer in this manner. The most 
serious difficulties have been smoothed over and former 
pleasant business relations resumed by diplomacy, and 
the printer who is always ready to arouse the ire of his 
customers will soon find himself without patrons. 

It is good judgment to remember always that the 
customer is, in a certain sense, the boss, and his wishes 
and peculiarities and views must be respected. The 
printer whose feelings are too easily offended is in the 
wrong business. Petty annoyances should be over¬ 
looked and overshadowed by the interesting phases 
of a business so closely in touch with progress and 
achievement in every other line of trade. 


108 


Verification by Letter 

While the printing salesman should present a con¬ 
ciliatory attitude toward the customer, he should nev¬ 
ertheless remember that he is the representative of his 
house, and that a certain amount of firmness is re¬ 
quired and will usually be accepted by the customer as 
no more than reasonable. 

The salesman can largely eliminate disputes by 
keeping the customer in close touch with the progress 
of his work and by agreements in advance in regard to 
matters over which there might be a difference of opin¬ 
ion when bills become due. Such agreements, when 
made verbally, should be immediately reduced to writ¬ 
ing. The salesman who comes to a conclusion with a 
customer in the customer’s office, then goes to his own 
office and verifies it with a letter giving his understand¬ 
ing of the situation, which the customer will receive 
while it is fresh in his mind, will save his house a vast 
deal of troublesome negotiations over the adjustment 
of matters in dispute. 


Chapter Thirteen 


Selling Problems of the Smaller Shop 

T HE proprietor of the small printing plant is 
usually inclined to believe that he has more trou¬ 
bles and more difficult problems to solve than 
the manager of the large plant. He thinks that if he 
only had an equipment four or five times as large and 
a proportionately larger number of employees, his 
path through the business world would be smoother, 
with larger profits and few of the annoyances that he 
now experiences. 

Investigation shows that this is hardly the correct 
view of the two conditions, although there are certainly 
many difficulties that seem to press particularly hard 
upon the man with a small shop, small business and 
small capital. 

On the other side of the argument, the small printer 
should be able to keep in closer touch with his business 
than the proprietor who must delegate important re- 
sponsibilit}’ to assistants who are not always compe¬ 
tent or reliable. 

The foreman of a small plant, in speaking of the 
condition of business in his shop, remarked to me: “We 
have either got too much work or not enough in our 
shop all the time.” This remark is applicable to the 
entire printing trade, but the small shop suffers more 



110 Fluctuation of Orders 

than the large one from the variation in the volume of 
business. Little can be done to obviate this fluctuation 
in orders, but the small-shop printer can do many 
things to meet the changing conditions of the volume 
of trade. It is the aim of nearly every printer to keep 
the presses moving, to keep all the equipment busy all 
the time, and this operates to prevent having some¬ 
thing in the way of reserve equipment, to take care of 
the unexpected rush job when it comes in. The same 
assertion holds true regarding workmen. In this line, 
however, the printer can keep so closely in touch with 
the labor situation that, when he needs extra men, he 
knows where to get them and also something of their 
capabilities. The printer can also fortify himself to a 
wonderful degree against a flood of orders by keeping 
his promises of delivery. If every job is delivered on 
time, as promised, it will be much easier to take care 
of new work without delaying it on account of unfin¬ 
ished jobs that should have been completed. 

The cost system is one of the difficulties that bother 
most proprietors of small shops, whether they consider 
it under that name or not. In spite of the agitation of 
printers’ organizations, local and national; in spite of 
the work of the International Cost Congress, organized 
to promote a better knowledge of costs ; and in spite of 
the efforts of several accounting firms making a spe¬ 
cialty of printers’ costs, it remains a fact that a great 
majority of small printing plants have no accurate 


Studying Costs 111 

method of determining their costs. And to the heads of 
these concerns it is a problem to sell the product at 
prices that will show a profit at the end of the year. 

The fallacy that the small shop can do printing 
much cheaper than the large plant had its origin with 
these small printers who had no cost-finding system. 
This belief was exploded long since, but many small 
printers have not heard the explosion. They continue 
to operate their shops in the mistaken belief that be¬ 
cause they do their own soliciting, their own bookkeep¬ 
ing and collecting, their own proofreading, and per¬ 
haps their own presswork, their costs are about half 
what a plant, with a standard cost-finding system, in 
the city, would charge for the same work. 

While the better way of ascertaining the working 
costs in any plant is by applying a good cost system 
to the work and learning the facts from the recapitula¬ 
tions, if a printer is too careless or lazy or unenter¬ 
prising to install a system and keep it in operation, he 
can learn something from study of the costs of other 
printing offices. Overhead expense is an item that the 
small printer cannot side-step, and if he will apply the 
tests he will find that his seemingly small rent, and the 
few dollars he pays each month for power and insur¬ 
ance and taxes and other fixed charges, amount to a 
larger percentage of his gross sales than these same 
items do in a large plant. They must be covered in the 
gross receipts of the business, and each job must pay 


112 


Paying the Proprietor 

its just ratio of overhead expenses, if the actual profit 
is to approximate the theoretical profit of the estimate. 

One of the chief difficulties of the small plant is the 
proprietor’s salary. It is troublesome because it is hard 
to get. Often the proprietor does not try to get it, be¬ 
cause the task seems almost impossible. But if there 
is one single item that should be taken care of, and 
that first of all, it is the salary of the man at the head 
of the business. If the responsibility of conducting a 
small printing business is not worth a regular salary, 
there is something about the work different from any 
other occupation. I have always contended that the 
printer who could not and did not meet his pay roll 
promptly every week should close the doors and admit 
himself a complete business failure. But there are many 
men who are scrupulously punctual in filling the pay 
envelopes of every employee except themselves. Their 
excuse usually is that they get their pay from the prof¬ 
its of the business. But the printing business should 
pay profits on the investment and on the work of the 
employees and the operation of the machinery. Theo¬ 
retically there should be a profit due the plant in the 
form of a salary to the manager or proprietor. 

The problem should be met face to face by putting 
the proprietor’s name on the pay roll at a weekly sal¬ 
ary commensurate with his ability as a manager, and 
he should get his weekly stipend as regularly as any 
employee. A very small adjustment of prices will cover 


113 


Small and Large Shops 

the item. I have seen the suggestion to printers to add 
a little to their prices for a specified time and thus 
raise the amount of money necessary to take them to 
some printers’ convention or cost congress; and if this 
is a practical suggestion, and I believe it is, it is en¬ 
tirely feasible to get enough more for the work done 
each week to pay the head of the business a salary 
fully equivalent to what he might receive for an equal 
amount of work and responsibility in any other trade. 

Many small printers find it hard to compete with 
larger plants, but if the large shop has advantages to 
offer in soliciting business, the small shop also has in¬ 
ducements which can be made very real and important. 
The public has the impression that the large shop can¬ 
not give the personal attention to its work that the 
small one can; and it is to some extent correct in 
this view. It only remains for the printer to offer his 
personal supervision and services as the feature of his 
business. Many buyers like to patronize the small shop, 
where they can watch their work grow into a realistic 
materiality, the product of ideas which they consider 
original or unsurpassed for their purpose. They like 
to talk to the “boss” and to have him bring them their 
proofs. If the boss is also the compositor or pressman, 
they are even better pleased, provided the quality of 
the finished job measures up to their idea of what it 
should be. 

Many small shops owe their success and growth to 


114 


Need not Cut Prices 


the reputation of the proprietor as an artistic printer, 
and many a printshop owner has continued to make 
capital out of his ability as a printer long after the 
business has outgrown the stage when the product of 
the shop was largely the work of one man. 

The small shop need not cut prices to get business. 
If the customer can be persuaded that the quality of 
the work and service is equal, if not superior, to that 
of the larger competing house, he usually cares little 
for the size of the enterprise and will consider quota¬ 
tions on an equal basis. If the personal-service idea can 
be applied to the customer’s own work in a way to show 
him that there is a real advantage to him in this serv¬ 
ice, the small shop may even be favored with the orders. 

Another difficulty of the small-shop proprietor is his 
credit. He often has not sufficient capital to carry on 
his business, and he falls into the habit of not paying 
his paper bills promptly, or he frequently asks custom¬ 
ers to advance money on their work to buy the paper. 
Sometimes the money stringency of his business makes 
him ignore the payment of small bills until he has an 
army of bill collectors calling on him more numerous 
than the aggregate of his customers. Nothing will ruin 
a man’s credit quicker, perhaps, than letting a lot of 
small bills run until they are long past due. Instead of 
one man doubting his credit, the printer then has a 
large number who, from their own personal experience, 
know that he does not pay his bills when due. 


Sound Credit 


115 


Even the smallest business should be built on the 
foundation of sound credit, and this can be done when 
it is considered that character, attention to business, 
enterprise and aggressiveness are all factors in extend¬ 
ing credit or in making a loan to a business man. His 
capital may be considered, but it is his prospects that 
the banker most considers. 

It injures a printer’s business standing to ask a cus¬ 
tomer to advance money with which to buy paper, or to 
ask him to pay a part of his bill before the goods are 
delivered on the excuse that the money is needed for 
the pay roll. The better plan is to borrow the money 
from the bank where the printer carries his account, 
and if the situation is explained this arrangement can 
usually be made. 

I know of nothing more pitiful in the printing trade 
than the spectacle of a concern that has no established 
credit and is consequently obliged to pay cash for 
every order of paper or other supplies. I was once 
closely in touch with the affairs of a printing house 
that had previously gone through bankruptcy, and, 
while the failure had occurred several years before and 
the firm was apparently sound at the time of which I 
write, the leading supply houses refused to sell goods 
except on a C. O. D. basis. The inconvenience and 
hardship of having to pay cash for everything bought 
were almost enough to cause another failure, but credit 
arrangements were finally made with other supply 
houses to extend credit for thirty or sixty days. 


116 Unduly Ambitious 

While a line of credit is essential in the carrying on 
of a printing business successfully, it is almost equally 
important to have sufficient capital to discount many 
of the bills before the discount date elapses. Shrewd 
buying and the discounting of bills may well be called 
the printer’s first profits, and in taking advantage of 
discounts for cash lies an opportunity for gain that 
resembles the banking business and is absolutely safe. 
It is perhaps the one department in the production of 
printing where the cost system is not essential. 

The small shop should not attempt to solicit orders 
too large to handle, but soliciting should be confined 
to work that can be handled advantageously, expedi¬ 
tiously, and without sending much of it out to be done. 
Extra-large jobs should be avoided because they dis¬ 
turb all the regular arrangements for handling work. 
A hundred small jobs are better for the small shop than 
one large one. Besides the advantages in handling the 
work, the hundred small jobs mean a hundred custom¬ 
ers, and, each of these patrons may have another job 
tomorrow, while the one large job may come from a 
source not usually prolific of printing orders. 

There have been numerous instances in the trade 
where a small shop has grown unduly ambitious and 
by extra effort has secured an order many times too 
large for its equipment, with the result that the big 
order, which it was mistakenly thought would make the 
success and reputation of the shop, was the means of 


117 


The Small Shop 

forcing it to the verge of bankruptcy. There is a middle 
ground between ambition and satisfied contentment 
which is the only safe position for the proprietor of 
the small shop to occupy. He should be enterprising 
enough to want to grow and aggressive enough to work 
to that end, but he should be patiently satisfied to grow 
slowly, so that his equipment, his floor space and his 
available capital can keep up with an increasing flow 
of orders. 

Notwithstanding all the peculiar difficulties and 
problems of the small shop, the lot of the owner of such 
a one is not so hard as he sometimes imagines, and 
oftentimes, in moments of worry and nervous tension 
incident to handling orders amounting to thousands 
of dollars for a big city plant, I have thought that I 
would gladly exchange places with the printer in a 
small town or the publisher of a country newspaper. 
There is a charm to the work, and it is free from much 
of the brain-racking toil of the big city. The small¬ 
town printer is an important personage in his field, 
while the printer in the city is almost a nonentity ex¬ 
cept to a limited circle of business acquaintances. 


Chapter Fourteen 


Why Printers Fail in Business 

HILE my friends all call me an optimist, I 



lose some of my optimism when I write on a 


» ▼ subject like “Why Printers Fail in Business.” 
There is so much poor management, poor judgment, 
shown in the printing trade as it is conducted today, 
even in the face of the vast amount of educational work 
that has been done by the various printers’ organiza¬ 
tions, that the subject must take on something of a 
gloomy aspect. 

A story of failure is not pleasant, but it is none the 
less important; and a discussion of some of the reasons 
why printers fail in business may be helpful to those 
printers who have not failed, but who will perhaps 
learn from the lesson. 

Failure in the printing trade is a much larger sub¬ 
ject than the stereotyped record of the bankruptcy 
court, although that is the ultimate end of many a busi¬ 
ness that failed, in the larger sense, before the creditors 
began to close in on it. If a business is not at least mod¬ 
erately successful it is a failure, and in the printing 
industry every business seems to be either advancing 
or going back. If the latter, it takes strenuous methods 
to stop the retrograde movement, turn about and get 
started forward. 


Successful Printing Concerns 119 

There are perhaps thirty thousand printing houses 
in the United States, and it has been stated that not 
more than five per cent, or at the most ten per cent of 
them, are operating at a substantial profit. The rest 
are failures, in some degree. There are somewhere be¬ 
tween twenty-five hundred and five thousand really 
successful printing firms. If you doubt the truth of 
these figures, go over the situation of your own city or 
town, in your mind. You may not have access to the 
books of your competitors, but you can judge by their 
business standing, the way in which the proprietors’ 
families live, and the kind of competition that you 
meet, whether your local rivals are successful business 
men or comparative failures. In classifying the repre¬ 
sentatives of the trade, don’t overlook your own busi¬ 
ness. Your own measure cf success or failure may be 
very apparent, but if you doubt your exact position, 
you can test out your business by the suggestions con¬ 
tained in these paragraphs and perhaps profit thereby. 

The banker knows a great deal about the business 
ability and financial standing of the printers in his 
territory. The poor standing of printers at the banks 
is almost proverbial. It is stated that only one-third 
of the American printers have a good line of credit at 
their local banks. Education along cost-finding meth¬ 
ods has done wonders, however, and most of the im¬ 
provement in business and financial standing must 
come along the lines of a better knowledge of costs. 


120 Causes of Failure 

The immediate causes of failure in the printing trade 
are legion, but back of them all are three underlying 
reasons to which the condition of nearly every bank¬ 
rupt printer can be traced. They are low prices, poor 
management, and lack of knowledge and experience. 

Low prices are placed first because this is the most 
important cause of failure. In the face of inexperience, 
ignorance of costs and poor management, a business 
might possibly make money, I suppose, if the prices 
were high enough; but when prices are cut to cost or 
lower, the business cannot succeed. 

One of the prime reasons why prices charged for 
printing are too low is because the selling expense is 
overlooked. There is too much difference between the 
theoretical profit, as shown by the estimate sheet, and 
the actual profit, as shown by the bank balance. Print¬ 
ers often add fifteen to twenty-five per cent to their 
estimated costs of production and think that is enough. 
In other manufacturing lines quite different customs 
prevail. The selling price is often double or treble the 
cost of production. Some well-known goods cost only a 
fourth or a fifth of the selling price to manufacture, 
yet the net profits of these manufacturers are not more 
than five, ten or fifteen per cent. The difference is con¬ 
sumed in advertising and selling expense, an item that 
is frequently ignored in quoting on printing. In the 
mail-order business it is quite generally understood 
that the selling price should be two hundred to three 


121 


The Expense of Selling 

hundred per cent of the original cost of the article sold. 
This statement may not apply to the great mail-order 
houses that sell everything, and whose volume of busi¬ 
ness reaches into the millions each year; but, applied 
to mail-order specialties, the statement is accurate 
enough to point the comparison with the w r ay printing 
is generally sold. 

The expense of selling is a real expense which should 
be charged to the business of the house, and the selling 
department should be treated much like any other de¬ 
partment of the factory in carrying on a cost system. 
To the selling department should be charged such 
items as salaries and commissions paid to salesmen, 
the salaries of estimators, all advertising expenditures, 
donations to charity, discounts and allowances made 
for most purposes, postage, and most of the expense of 
correspondence. The total of these items in a year will 
amount in most plants to five to fifteen per cent of the 
total sales, and will be an amount that must be con¬ 
sidered in quoting prices or else many jobs, taken on 
a close margin, will be done at a loss. 

Poor management is a frequent cause of failure, and 
under this heading should be included such policies as 
can be charged to poor judgment, a faulty cost system 
or the lack of one, insufficient or excessive equipment, 
and careless methods generally in extending credit, 
handling orders and making collections. 

From the standpoint of the workman, who gets an 


122 Assistance of Supply Houses 

occasional glimpse of the prices charged for the vari¬ 
ous departments’ work, there appears to be a large and 
easy profit in the business, and it needs little urging 
for him to go in for himself. An experience in the busi¬ 
ness office of a printing house seems to be quite as es¬ 
sential to a man entering the printing business as a 
knowledge of the work of the trade is desirable. A 
knowledge of both ends, the producing and the selling, 
is about equally important, and the man who engages 
in the business, deficient in either department of knowl¬ 
edge, is under a serious handicap. He may win in the 
end, but he will pay dearly for his inexperience. An ac¬ 
curate and definite knowledge of a good cost-finding 
system is one of the first things the master printer 
should possess, and he should learn this lesson thor¬ 
oughly, backward and forward. 

It is right that printing organizations should ask 
the assistance of the printers’ supply houses in their 
efforts to put the business upon a better foundation, 
with definite standards and more general customs, and 
it is gratifying to note the favorable response on the 
part of the supply houses. 

In the light of competition, it is also to the interest 
of every master printer not only to put his own affairs 
upon a businesslike basis, but also to assist others, even 
his keenest competitors, to an accurate knowledge of 
costs and selling methods. Competing prices of two 
houses, similarly equipped, should not vary greatly, 


Poor Bookkeeping Responsible 123 

and with two bids nearly equal, the job naturally goes 
to the firm offering the better service; or the placing 
of the order may depend upon the personality of the 
manager or salesman, a much better condition than a 
consideration of price alone. 

Poor bookkeeping is responsible for many failures, 
not in the actual charging of the orders to the accounts 
of the customers, but in the keeping of cost records, the 
handling of all the details of expense, and accounts of 
charges for extras, overtime, alterations, etc. There 
are many opportunities for revenue to a plant by mak¬ 
ing plain and easily understood charges for extra at¬ 
tention or work in connection with orders. In the litho¬ 
graphing industry it is customary to advise patrons 
that a variation of five to ten per cent from the quan¬ 
tity of any large order will be considered as good de¬ 
livery, the variation to be taken care of by a propor¬ 
tionate addition to or deduction from the price quoted. 
The firm that does this will never go into bankruptcy 
as a result of failure to make charges for all work per¬ 
formed, because it will be equally careful in all its ac¬ 
counting to make sure that every item of service, work 
or goods is billed out to its customers. 

There are more failures in the printing trade than 
appear in the bankruptcy courts. Many a change of 
firm is, in effect, a failure, being a tacit acknowledg¬ 
ment that the former manager or owner is unable to 
continue the business. It is usually the unprofitable 


124 


Buying a Plant 

business that is sold, not the growing, successful con¬ 
cern. And there are more plants on the down grade or 
on the verge of failure than might be generally sup¬ 
posed. 

If you want to find out who are the unsuccessful 
printers in any city, advertise in the want-advertise¬ 
ment section of the Sunday newspaper that you wish to 
buy a printing plant and see how many answers you 
get. A friend of mine wanted to buy a plant to do some 
specialty printing in a Western city and advertised 
that he wished to purchase a shop for cash. From the 
replies he received he judged that nearly every shop in 
the town was for sale, with numerous ones in adj oining 
territory. From the many plants on the market he was 
able to select the one he wanted, and bought it at a low 
price; but there were many other apparent bargains 
offered him by owners who were most anxious to sell. 

This is a deplorable condition, although a rather 
common one in the large cities. There are hundreds of 
printing plants for sale by men who have found that 
they cannot operate them at a profit. They want to get 
rid of their property for the same reason that they 
would want to sell a house that had outlived its useful¬ 
ness to them, or a broken-down horse that could no 
longer work. Often the opportunities for success lie 
close at hand, but they cannot avail themselves of them. 

Business training and education are needed to lower 
the percentage of failures in the business world, and 


125 


Better Managers Needed 

in the printing trade this training must be both general 
and specific, and the education a practical one. Better 
salesmen and better managers are needed—not only 
master printers, but masters of salesmanship and man¬ 
agement as applied to the manufacturing trade of 
printing. 

























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